Is The Internet Bring A New Era

Of American Cultural Imperialism Essay, Research Paper

The Internet has emerged as the most rapidity adopted communication medium in history. The Internet by design is de-centralized, inexpensive, uncensored, and accessible from anywhere in the globe. Bill Gates contends that the Internet is first step along the Information Superhighway , which will ultimately create a global village that will allow for a more symmetrically distribution of information. The United States, which invented most of the underlying technologies for the Internet, leads the rest of the world in embracing the Internet as measuring by users, the number of English based web-sites, and Internet Service Providers (ISP), but also producing the hardware and software that drives the Internet. Unlike previous technological revolutions in which the novel idea or technology is inherently neutral, the some of the core technologies behind the Internet are culturally biased. This fact combined with the United States commanding dominance in nearly all aspects of the Internet and the apparent lack of controllability of the content of Internet has fueled international fears of a new era of American cultural imperialism. According to Barber, this Western tidal wave of cultural biased information and products will create a bi-polar world (Jihad vs. McWorld). However, Barber concludes that unless Jihad s supporters (e.g. religious organization) embraces the Internets and the new markets it creates, the Jihad s long-term survivability is low (Barber, 156).

Schiller, Barber, and Hamelink maintain an antiquated view of cultural imperialism. They contend that in our current information society, information technology has remained in the hands the economic elite. They hold view the core , mainly composed of MNCs, as the entity that controls uni-directional information and technology flows to the periphery nations (i.e. Third World states). Schiller defines cultural imperialism in as the spread of a culture of capitalism in which a economically denominate culture will create structurally imposed needs (Tomlinson, 104). Tomlinson proposed that these needs are not necessarily all the expression of subjectively experienced needs and desires, but may be need imposed on agents by the conditions in which they live. (Tomlinson, 133) MNCs and other components of the core employ mass-media as the vehicle for corporate marketing. This marketing campaign will create audiences whose loyalties are tied to brand named products and whose understanding of social reality is mediated through a scale of commodity satisfaction. (Tomlinson, 38)

However, certain aspects of the debate such as the conglomeration of ownership, standardized production, and formatted content, do not apply in terms of new media informational flows, especially via the Internet. As Tomlinson skillfully pointed out the modern reality: media technologies and economies have become more intertwined, which have forced cultures to become more morphic. Thus, the one-way flow according to the traditional definition of cultural imperialism reverses itself into a two-way flow in which what sells abroad influences what Americans see at home (Tomlinson, 125)

Tomlinson presents a novel and modern interpretation of cultural imperialism through his theory of the globalization of capitalist post-modernity . (Tomlinson, 175) Instead of an invasion of weak cultures by a stronger one, the capitalist modernity is a Western disease which promotes decay of local cultural practices. These cultural practices are manifestations of social imaginary , which are the basis for culture. He claims that the institutions of capitalist modernity (e.g. MNC) will colonize the imagined cultural space of less developed societies with new goals of possessive individuality and consumption. He employs the word globalisism instead of imperialism because the interdependency and interconnection happens in less intentional way (Tomlinson,174). There is no international conspiracy by MNCs to promote one culture over another. Rather, MNCs independently establish and promote their global markets by creating cultural practices that promote consumption or their goods and services in all nations. Therefore, globalisism is a disorganized process to weaken the cultural coherence of all individual nation-states (Tomlison, 175)

Appaduria (KIM) constructed five cultural flows that globalism creates. Enthonscapes refer the flows of peoples. Technoscapes includes the flow of machinery, hardware, and software through the production processes of MNC, national corporations and governments. Finanscapes involves the flow of images and information from various forms of media. Ideoscapes, are similar to mediascapes in that they are image oriented however, they are often political in nature and deal with the flow of ideology through the globe. The reason the Internet is such a powerful tool in the globalization process in that it enables all five of Appaduria s cultural flows to occur at the speed of light. One can simultaneously find employment in another country, buy or sell tangible (i.e. computers) and non-tangible products (i.e. investment strategies) , watch media reports from any part of the global, and join Usergroup of a radical political organization. In the 21st century, the primary vehicle for globalism is the Internet because of its ability for all five cultural flows to transcend national boa