Core post-4

In Thinking Globally, Micheal Curtin provides us with a brief review of the approaches that has been used to make sense of global distribution of media. In 1970s and 80s, media imperialism thesis was quite popular among the scholars. According to this theory, we can understand the global media flows as a new form of Western domination of the third world in the postcolonial age. Curtin cites two main criticisms to this theory: first is the fact that American media doesn’t just dominate the media of non-Western countries, it also overflows the media landscapes of developed countries such as Canada. Secondly, Curtin suggests, this theory assumes that national and local medias are always preferable to American imports, but that is simply not the case. A lot of authoritarian regimes censor their media and put out a huge volume of propagandist productions. Curtin’s alternative to media imperialism theory is media capital approach, which claims that media industries are driven by logic of accumulation, flows of creative migration and sociocultural forces.

I agree with the relevancy of the three criteria Curtin proposed to prioritize when studying global media, but I don’t think this perspective invalidates the contribution of media imperialism thesis, and both arguments Curtin makes against the imperialism theory sound insufficient to me. The fact that American media is exported to other Western countries as well doesn’t make it less imperial. It is very likely that the cultural influence of American media in places like Canada is perceived vastly different and occupies a different space in the overall national media landscape compared to its non-Western counterparts with less developed media productions. Secondly, simply comparing national medias with American exports and deciding one is less authoritarian than the other still doesn’t negate the ideological project of the latter. Besides, it is important to note that in the age of streaming and commodification of diversity, companies such as Netflix produce “local” shows that seem to celebrate and respect the geographical diversity, but run the risk of reproducing the imperial imagination of the “other” spaces and packaging it as the authentic product both to the countries they are creating foreign language originals for and to the rest of the world.