Another particular field of the critic of
the concentration is the critic of the international concentration of media.
And of course, main critique is
turning around criticizing the American dominance in this field.
Because as we know,
main American media companies hire the same time,
global companies in the field of movies,
global television, telecommunication et cetera.
Of course, we can distinguish a few reasons of that.
First of all, United States represent the biggest interior market.
So, they have a lot of cash,
a lot of money, in order to invest into the global expansion.
Secondly, United States movie and especially movie sectors started to
penetrate the foreign markets just after
the World War 2 when the European film industry was very weak.
Then, the third point of view is that such penetration
was also part of The Truman's doctrine to
struggle against communism on the third territories.
So, it means that instead exporting ideology of communism,
you should export the ideology of,
I don't know, liberal market or something like this.
So, another one of the point of view we can find about
the reason of American dominance is the point of view that being multicultural country,
United States are able to produce media for different cultures.
Just because United States is a plural cultural country.
Another also point of view is that United States are the center of the global capitalism,
because it's hosting such organizations as International Monetary Foundation,
proliferator of WTO, et cetera,
owner of main reserve currency et cetera, et cetera.
And from this point of view,
it's simplifies for them, the market domination.
Of course, there are two views on such American domination or domination of, we'll say,
rich countries on media field or cultural industries field on
so-called poor countries or informationally poor countries et cetera.
First, you ease the view coming from
so-called MIT school but schoolers from different fields such as,
Ithiel de Sola Pool who is originally was from MIT or
Daniel Lerner is that idea that United States domination
could be considered as a modernization and
transformation of the traditionalist societies as well as
proliferation of the most democratic way of
life oriented toward economic growth et cetera.
So, the second they opposing you this so-called cultural imperialism idea,
the ideas of Herbert Schiller,
Armand Mattelart trying to understand
that United States domination could be considered as a process of
cultural colonization and hegemony
of capitalism as they opposed to the communism ideology et cetera.
If we'll take a look on modernization theory,
we can probably mention two main books.
It's the book by Daniel Lerner,
"Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the MiddleEast" where he's
studying the effect of the international radio broadcast especially Voice of America,
on our Middle East countries.
And he's trying to argue that the modernization is
a cultural process and from this point of view,
mass media are crucial in this process because
mass media are contributing to the participation.
So, the first stage is the urbanization.
Urbanization brings out the literacy.
Literacy, we'll say, affects the media production.
Field and Media Production increase the participation, political participation.
So these several linear model of
the development of each society from the point of view of Lerner.
The second approaches the or the same in the same, we'll say, theory,
is Ithiel de Sola Pool who was the scientist in MIT,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He wrote the book, "Technologies of Freedom" where he's trying to represent
technological revolution as factor
which will completely destroy the borders between countries,
which will completely modernize,
we'll say, under modernized countries et cetera, et cetera.
So, here we can find some citation from the quotation from this book, 'Within nations,
the satellite carriers, microwave carriers,
and local carrier may be,
and in the United States almost certainly will be in the hands of separate organizations,
but they will interconnect.
So even the basic physical network will be a network of networks.
So, the idea of the globalization of any kind of communication.
Technologies, which finally, will
completely globalize the content delivered by such services."
The critical approach. The critical approach is based on the idea of
so-called cultural imperialism or an idea of
cultural domination argued by Herbert Schiller in his book,
"Mass Communication and American Empire" and the
second was the "Communication and Cultural Domination."
So, according to him,
the diffusion of American ideology incites such kind of films,
could be considered as
the particular ideology as the particular now liberal ideology which
is pointed out by so-called "free flow of
information" doctrine of the foreign policy in the United States.
And from this point of view,
the domination of United States media industry on global media markets
consequently make a high-pressure power on other markets et cetera.
And, for example, one of books which
illustrates such a broadsheet the critical essay of Armand Mattelart and Ariel Dorfman,
"How To Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology In The Disney Comic."
Just they say how the ideology of money,
ideology of individualism, ideology of the free competition et cetera, et cetera.
is pointed out in such kids' book as Disney comics et cetera, et cetera.
This is just one of example of such, we'll say,
imperialistic or cultural imperialism approach to the cultural industries.