Media Imperialism

Media imperialism is a subcategory under the broader heading of cultural imperialism. The conventional view for quite some time was that it was the Western (especially US) media, and the technologies associated with it, that was imperialistic and that dominated less developed nations and their cultures. Thus, it was television programs created in the United States, movies from Hollywood (Cowen 2002), books by American authors and published originally in the United States, US media conglomerates such as Fox and Time Warner, and so on, that were seen as imposing themselves on less developed nations and playing a key role not only in their media, but in shaping their culture. For example, the idea that American movies have dominated not only less developed nations, but much of the world as a whole, is supported in Global Hollywood 2: “Los Angeles–New York culture and commerce dominate screen entertainment around the globe, either directly or as an implied other, and the dramatic success of US film since World War I has been a model for its export of music, television, advertising, the Internet, and sport” (Miller et al. 2005).