MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS
J. O.BOYD-BARRETT
The focus of this chapter is on the role of the mass media in the poorer countries of the world, how the functions of the media relate to one or more definitions of
‘national development’, and especially on whether and how the media serve as channels for inter-cultural ‘invasion’ of the poorer countries by the more affluent and powerful nations. In other words, the central theme is the role of the mass media in relations of cultural dependency between nations. The title might suggest to some that this theme belongs in the study of ‘inter-cultural communication’. But others might argue that the heart of the problem lies in the imbalance of power between nations. Either way, this chapter can do little more than signpost some issues that are central to the question of the contribution of the media to dependency. At the same time it should be kept in mind that cultural dependency can also reflect, and may reinforce, imbalances of socioeconomic power among the affluent nations, or among cultures within nations. Nor must it be assumed that the mass media are necessarily the most significant contributors to cultural dependency, let alone to other forms of dependency.
FROM IMPERIALISM TO DEPENDENCY
Space is insufficient here to examine the concept of ‘dependency’ in any detail.
To some readers the term ‘imperialism’ may be more familiar. But ‘imperialism’
is strongly associated with the act of territorial annexation for the purpose of formal political control. ‘Dependency’ theory asserts that national sovereignty is not a sufficient safeguard against the possibility of de facto control of a nation’s economy by alien interests. In most Marxist theory, imperialism is regarded as an inevitable outcome of capitalism. There is no essential reason in dependency theory why the economic and political interests of the communist superpowers should not sometimes also distort or stunt the autonomous development of poorer nations. Imperialism, in Marxist theory, can be superseded only by international socialism. In contemporary dependency theory there is a greater element of doubt as to whether the circle of dependency processes, whereby the structural imperatives of developed economies enslave the weaker, is or is not absolutely vicious, and as to whether significant change is possible within the
existing international order. In this paper it will be taken ‘as read’ that there is substantial evidence to show that many weaknesses in the economies of poorer nations are partly caused by and sometimes reinforced by the political and commercial interests of the stronger economies. But no position will be taken a priori as to the long-term inevitability of dependency, or as to the significance of media communication in relation to dependency.
Outline of the argument
The purpose of this paper is first to look at the major different approaches to the role of mass media in what, for the sake of convenience, will loosely be termed
‘Third-World development’. It will be suggested that these approaches reflect different underlying ideologies. It will be seen that for both ideological and technological reasons there is considerable debate as to what constitutes the appropriate range of phenomena to which the study of the media and dependency should confine itself. A brief account will then be given of the different ways in which inter-cultural penetration is found to occur. Certain shortcomings in the evidence will be discussed. It will be suggested that a key factor in any evaluation of the role of the mass media in the process of ‘cultural dependency’
is the significance to be attributed to the power of any state or government apparatus to combat this process. Many attempts at such evaluation tend, as a result of the kind of questions they ask, to select or give undue weight to evidence which will support a condemnatory attitude. A more fruitful line of investigation may be to review and evaluate the kinds of claim which some western consultants originally made in support of the harnessing of the mass media to developmental objectives.
THE POLITICS OF A CHANGING PARADIGM
Nordenstreng and Schiller (1979) identified three successive paradigms in the study of the relationship between communication and development. In the first of these the emphasis was on the contribution of the mass media to the promotion of western-style (capitalist) development. I will term this the
‘missionary’ approach. A second paradigm sought to expose the more evident elements of ethnocentricity of the first, and to relate the mass media to different models of development. This may be labelled the ‘pluralist’ approach. But a third and more recent school of thought took the view that there could be no real understanding of the media unless priority was given to an understanding of the fundamental relationship between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ economies, ‘the international socio-politico-economic system that decisively determines the course of development within the sphere of each nation’ (my emphasis). This paradigm I will tag ‘totalistic’.
Corresponding sociological models
Each approach or paradigm corresponds with one of three major sociological models of society. The ‘missionary’ approach develops from structural functionalism. Functionalism tended to reify certain postulated features of complex industrial societies as essential for their reproduction and survival. This in turn encouraged the assumption that industrialization would be facilitated in other societies if these essential features were in some way engendered. The media
‘missionaries’ sought to transplant western media technologies to the poorer economies so that one day these economies would be facsimiles of the western economies. In sociological theory, functionalism was superseded by Neo- Weberianism which reacted against the functionalist reification of society and against the inability of functionalism to explain social change. Neo-Weberianism gave primacy to conflict as a driving force of change, and in particular, the conflict between groups for income, power and status. In doing so, it
‘rediscovered’ motive, interest, and perception, and ‘redelivered’ society to human beings. But it could also be seen to legitimate a pluralistic view of society as made up of equally competing and bargaining groups, a society in which belief-systems could operate independently as sources of change. There are similarities here, therefore, with what I have called the ‘pluralist’ approach to the study of the relationship between communication and development. While it pays equal regard to different modes of development, this approach may underestimate the extent to which the pattern of development in any given economy may be determined by a stronger economy. Thus it precludes the kind of analysis advocated by the media ‘totalists’ whose view of society derives from neo-Marxism, in which all social relations are seen in terms of their derivation from the mode of production.
TOTALIZATION’ AND THEORY DEVELOPMENT
The major strategic consequence of the ‘totalistic’ approach in the study of the mass media and ‘development’ is that it greatly widens the range of phenomena that must be considered essentially relevant. The theoretical core of analysis is located at ever higher levels of global social structure. In Schiller’s work, as represented in Chapter 2 of the 1979 volume, the theoretical core is located in the relationship between the multi-national corporations and the global market economy. (The relationship between multi-nationals and nation states, on the other hand, is seen as relatively unproblematic: governments of parent nations and élites of host nations simply work in support of these giant enterprises.) In this scenario, transnational media are seen as constituting the ‘ideologically supportive informational infrastructure for the MNC’s’ (Schiller, 1979, p. 21).
Thus in addition to the generalized informational activities in which all such enterprises engage (e.g. generation and transmission of business data, export of management techniques), there are various categories of trans media support
activities, most important of which are advertising agencies, market survey and opinion polling services, public relations firms, government information and propaganda services and traditional media.
It is perhaps significant that traditional mass media are relegated to such a low position in this hierarchy (with the implication that they are mere creatures of advertising agencies) and that some other forms of sociocultural imperalism are barely considered. This is partly explicable in terms of the rhetorical usefulness of highlighting the less familiar features of cultural dependency, but Schiller’s agenda may also, in its ordering of issues, serve to underemphasize the role of state regulation.
A second major expansionary pressure upon the framework of analysis is represented by the pace of technological change, which may in turn be related to the development and commercialization of innovations in the defence and aerospace industries of the major economies (Mattalart, 1979). Satellite communication, for instance, introduces the growing potential for direct broadcast television and greatly complicates the task of global allocation of communication space. The rapid but uneven pace of satellite development intensifies the conflict between those countries that lag in technology but wish to preserve access for future use, and those which believe that existing capacity should be fully exploited by those with the means to do so. Developments of computer technology and digital communication greatly intensify the capacity for ‘transborder data flows’ at a pace possibly beyond the ability of international bodies to regulate. The ‘electronic’ revolution in the dissemination of information, whereby the same digital signal can be transformed into a number of different final formats requires that equivalent attention be given to both
‘traditional’ media (for example, newspapers, television) and more recent dissemination technologies (for example, home terminal publishing, videotext) (Hamelink, 1979; Marvin, 1980). The task presented by the need for international regulation of these developments itself represents a further pressure on the framework of analysis, one that requires consideration not simply of the socio-economic structures of dependency, but also of the highly legalistic contexts in which much international bargaining on such matters tends to occur (cf. the proceedings of the World Administrative Radio Conference, 1979, or the UNESCO debate on the final report of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, 1980).
The benefits and costs of ‘totalization’
There can be little question as to the generally beneficial impact that these trends towards ‘totalization’ have had on the quality of media-related theory and insight. For instance, they brilliantly de-neutralize the concepts of ‘development’,
‘media’, ‘technology’, etc., so that the signification of each of these is shown to be profoundly political. Among other things, they alert researchers to the danger of uncritical adoption of western assumptions about which particular vehicles of
cultural or media influence are the most ‘significant’: media technology, comics, and advertising, for example, may be just as significant as, respectively, media content, ‘élite’ news, and drama. Totalization’ also alerts researchers to the assumptions about the channels of control which actually carry most influence:
in the assessment of communication impact, for instance, an owner cannot be assumed to have more overall influence than an advertiser or supplier.
But ‘totalization’ also brings certain dangers. It not only de-neutralizes the phenomena under investigation, but effectively de-neutralizes itself at the same time. Its emergent priorities are curiously in line with the political strategies and bargaining poses of the nationalist-Marxist alliance of southern nations in their international negotiations with nations of the north. In certain formulations it is ahistorically and naively determinist: thus Nordenstreng and Schiller speak of the
‘decisive determination’ of national development by the global economy. This formulation is as rigid as the structural functionalism which neo-Marxism helped to surmount, indeed more so, in its incapacity to account for change. The totalistic approach adopts too uncritically a relatively simplistic version of dependency theory, in a manner which appears unduly concerned to eliminate as insignificant the machinery of the national state. For example, it is by no means generally accepted that capitalist expansion everywhere or even typically destroyed viable patterns of desirable or indigenous forms of development; nor is it beyond dispute that dominant nations ‘de-capitalize’ peripheral nations or ‘de- nationalize’ their successful local business in the manner in which dependency theory asserts (Smith, 1979). (‘Decapitalize’ is to direct or deflect indigenous capital or sources of capital away from locally-controlled enterprise and investment. ‘Denationalize’ is to remove the locus of real control of indigenous enterprise from local to non-local interests.) It is still too early to determine what significance should be attributed to the fact that India, for example, has doubled its food production in twenty years; is, in 1980, the eighth largest industrial country in the world, with the third largest pool of technically trained manpower;
and has exerted considerable government control over industrial development.
Simplistic referencing to dependency theory is not enough. What is required is a two-way process in which grounded theoretical research informs and modifies dependency theory as much as it draws sustenance from it.
FORMS OF INTER-CULTURAL MEDIA PENETRATION
The remainder of this paper is concerned primarily with the inter-cultural dimensions of traditional mass media processes and with particular reference to the poorer economies of the world. The discussion will be contextualized, where appropriate, in relation to the range of factors discussed in preceding paragraphs.
Perhaps the most overt form of intercultural media penetration is the ownership of national media by multinational interests. Linked to, but by no means coincidental with this, is the question of the locus of formal managerial control.
But regardless of ownership or formal control, inter-cultural penetration may also
be exercised by external customers for media services—in particular, the multi- national companies which buy advertising space, or any advertisers who channel their custom through multi-national advertising agencies, or both. Both media and advertising organizations may have resort to multinational public relations, market survey, and opinion-poll organizations in order to appraise the size and social composition of media audiences and the potential audience demand for various commodities. Advertising itself ranks as part of programme content and as such exerts influence, but it also exerts influence on the content of other programming. The extent of such influence depends, first, on how far media executives consider it necessary to maximize audiences or to attract certain kinds of audience for the benefit of advertisers; second, on the extent of competition for advertisers’ custom; and third, on the extent of government or professional regulation of the volume and range of advertising. Next there is the question of programme contents that are imported or simply received from extra-national sources. The role of imports should also be seen in the light of the objectives and economics of the exporting organizations. This introduces, for example, questions concerning the conditions of sale: are the sales package-deals or is there collusion between the major exporters to maintain given price levels? The notion of ‘exporter’ should be defined broadly enough to encompass both those organizations whose primary concern is organizational profit, and those whose primary concern is to promote general or specific attitude change in relation to given political, religious or other objectives.
It is not only specific programme contents that are exported. Directly or indirectly there is also the ‘export’ from the stronger economies of particular conceptual models that affect, for instance, prevailing views as to how programme contents should be arranged or presented, or the components which are deemed to constitute an appropriate ‘schedule’ or ‘format’. These models incorporate certain profound assumptions: for example, that certain complexes of media technology should be applied in particular ways. The news-entertainment- advertising mix of the daily newspaper is an instance; likewise, the association of media technologies with certain periodicities of use as in the daily or weekly newspaper, the weekly or monthly magazine, or evening television. But the technology itself, not just its application, is cultural, and occurs in the form that it does for complex social and economic reasons which have to do with the histories of social relations in the metropolitan centres and which embody certain consequences of class relations (as in élite-mass one-way communication). The adaptation of particular kinds of media receiver to given international communication facilities (radio, cable, satellite) raises issues to do with the ownership and control of such facilities, differential rates of access to them, and procedures for international allocation. These considerations overlap with the process of the transmission of situationally-specific professional ideologies from metropolitan to peripheral centres of the world economy, through such means as formal education and training schemes, or simply through constant exposure to imported media products.
Theory or propaganda?
There is almost certainly a good case to be made for the hypothesis that the mass media have, to an as yet unspecified extent, contributed to the complex of processes referred to as dependency. Yet much of the evidence and argumentation is presented as though it were in illustration of an established and incontrovertible fact. There is a rough division, in the catalogue of forms of media-related cultural penetration already outlined, between those which are susceptible to precise measurement (e.g. the number of newspapers owned by multi-nationals; the number of hours of imported television programming in peak viewing times) and those which are not nearly as amenable to positivistic methodologies (e.g. cultural changes attributable to mass media). Yet the weight of evidence for theses of media imperialism often relies heavily on the latter.
Caution with respect to available evidence is frequently absent. Instances may be noted where there is no simple acknowledgement of the non-availability of certain kinds of relevant data. Too much weight may sometimes be given to western influences on one particular medium without reference to the general character of all media output or to evidence concerning respective media impacts.
The totality of relevant exogenous media influences may sometimes be evaluated in isolation from an evaluation of countervailing indigenous influences. It tends to be assumed that the adoption of any given western media practice represents a stage in the process of social change that would not have occurred solely in response to indigenous pressures. The role of the demand for cultural imports is underemphasized or glibly explained away as ‘created’. Analysis of actual effects or consequences is especially rudimentary. The contours of the debate have perhaps been too much influenced by the Latin American experience, where specifically North American penetration of technology, advertising, low- brow canned US media fodder, has been especially acute in conditions of relatively low national government regulation. There is a general tendency towards exaggerated claims for media impact. When the particular dangers predicted in relation to one innovation fail to materialize, or do not materialize as unambiguously as expected, attention moves on to the next incipient weapon of imperialism. In the case of direct broadcast satellites, for example, insufficient attention was given by the pessimists to the wide variety of means available to governments for controlling or preventing the reception of such transmissions (for example, by prohibiting the sale of particular kinds of receiver). It is very curious that a phenomenon as pervasive and as elusive as that of inter-cultural media influence should so rarely be seen to contribute at least some positive factors to the process of social change in poorer economies. Finally, in consideration of the macropolitical implications of cultural imperialism, there is often a strange reluctance to speculate on the global consequences of a unilateral decision of one power-block not to thus pursue its interests.