Modernization theory

Cultural Imperialism theory. One prominent aspect of dependency in international communication was identified in the 1970s by Oliver Boyd-Barrett as 'media imperialism', examining information and media inequalities between nations and how these reflect broader issues of dependency, and analysing the hegemonic power of mainly US-dominated international media - notably news agencies, magazines, films, radio and television.

Those involved in a cultural studies approach to the analysis of international communication argued that, like other cultural artefacts, media 'texts' could be polysemic and were amenable to different interpretations by audiences who were not merely passive consumers but 'active' participants in the process of negotiating meaning (Fiske, 1987). It was also pointed out that the 'totalistic' cultural imperialism thesis did not adequately take on board such issues as how global media texts worked in national contexts, ignoring local patterns of media consumption.

One of the limits of the cultural and media imperialism approach is that it did not fully take into account the role of the national elites, especially in the developing world. However, though its influence has dwindled, the theory of structural imperialism developed by the Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, also offers an explanation of the role of international communication in maintaining structures of economic and political power.

Like modernization theory, the cultural imperialism paradigm lost much of its appeal as an analytical tool. The main reasons were the capitalist rhetoric and the reregulatory developments of the 1980s, the emergence of the ‘tiger economies’ of Southeast Asia, and the decline of the communist East, all of which fed a scepticism as to the validity of imperialism (and dependence) theories, which, alongside the significant increases in media production within some developing nations (see Tunstall, 2007), population mobility and the intensification of trade, disguised ‘the inevitability of global concentration behind a smokescreen of local proliferation’ (BoydBarrett, 2010)

Sparks (2007: 126) noted that the imperialism paradigm had been replaced by the concept of globalization as the prevailing way of thinking about global media. But unlike modernization theory, the concept of cultural imperialism can still be considered relevant, for it incorporates some of the key issues of globalization theory, including hybridism (the emergence of new transcultural models resulting from coloniza­tion) and the weakening role of the nation-state. Furthermore, the cultural imperialism thesis is close to cultural globalization theory, which argues that media globalization is not necessarily leading to the homogenization of global culture under the auspices of Western consumerism.