Introduction

This chapter reviews major aspects of the theories and landscape of global communication. Although there is currently relatively little concern about NWICO and the role of specialized United Nations agencies such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and UNESCO, there is a growing concern about the cultural, social, privacy, and economic impacts of global communication trends. An unexpected exception is the ITU’s role in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). With widespread use of the Internet, transnational corporate acquisitions and mergers between media, telecommunications, and advertising corporations, and the expanding economic role of cultural industries, the issue of global communications has moved to a higher plane.

The impact of communications corporations is no longer a trivial or marginal matter for policymakers, researchers, and investors. All core nations rely for their economic health and viability on the success in foreign countries of their communications corporations. In previous decades, other leading corporations, such as those in the agriculture, automotive, natural resources, or aerospace industries, made major contributions to the creation of new jobs and new wealth, but that is no longer the case. Particularly with the end of the Cold War, the aerospace industry, which includes military aircraft, has seen a substantial reduction in employment, impact, and influence. As a result, the success of cultural industries, domestically and in foreign markets, has become a vital component of successful international trade. Those nations that enjoy the services of successful global communication corporations such as Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, Sony, News Corporation, Bertelsmann, and NBCUniversal clearly count on these firms continuing to be successful in order to keep domestic employment high, as well as to keep their trade ledgers favorably balanced.

Cultural industries are a concern of national and international policymakers as well as of major corporations in North America, Europe, and Asia. With the drive to increase market share, coupled with more sophisticated technology and advertising, many new markets are being inundated with media fare created and owned by large foreign stakeholders. Now even more and larger foreign communication stakeholders are competing aggressively with each other in nations and markets on other continents – frequently several time zones and cultures away. This is particularly true in semiperipheral nations, which are the next frontier for multinational communication corporations. Core‐based firms are aggressively developing and promoting new media opportunities in semiperipheral nations in order to increase their market share. Whether these firms are building new modern multiplex movie theaters or expanding access to the Internet, the semiperipheral nations have become the commercial battlefield for core communication stakeholders. Also, sponsored media seminars and workshops dealing with the values and practices of Western free‐press traditions are increasingly offered in semiperipheral nations. In this collective process, some indigenous cultures and languages are at significant risk.

Finally, the proliferation of global music, movies, advertising, and websites for preteens and teenagers has led to a new generation and a culture gap. These groups now have common experiences of audio and visual materials, activities, language, topics, and in many cases clothing and values that cut across this key demographic segment in North America, Asia, and Europe. These audio and video materials give them similar expressions and worldviews that are increasingly remote or different from those of their parents or even their older siblings. The attitudes, dress, language, and behavior of the adolescents (who are particularly heavy media consumers) in this growing global segment, including MTV groupies, Britney Spears lookalikes, rap music and Bart Simpson wannabes, are increasingly at odds with those of their parents’ or their teachers’ generation. Between them and their grandparents, particularly those who have migrated from another nation and whose first language is not English, this phenomenon has created an even greater cultural and behavioral divide.

As a result of the impact of global communication, many teenagers around the world have more in common with each other, thanks to MTV and social websites, than they do with other normative groups with whom they interact, including parents, grandparents, relatives, and teachers. The long‐run implications of this relatively recent global media phenomenon have yet to be determined, researched, or fully understood.

One attempt to understand the role of media in society and its impact on culture is to view it through the concept of mediatization as well as of electronic colonialism theory (ECT), which looks at mass media as having profound interrelated effects on institutions, individuals, and their culture and society. In “The Mediatization of Society” Stig Hjarvard stated:

Mediatization is to be considered a double‐sided process of high modernity in which the media on the one hand emerge as an independent institution with logic of its own that other social institutions have to accommodate to. On the other hand, media simultaneously become an integrated part of other institutions like politics, work, family, and religion as more and more of these institutional activities are performed through both interactive and mass media. The logic of the media refers to the institutional and technological modus operandi of the media, including the ways in which media distribute material and symbolic resources and make use of formal and informal rules.¹

Mediatization takes a broader look at the significance of the mass media, much like ECT. In his article on “Science and the Media,” Peter Weingart notes the key role the media play in terms of forming public opinion as well as the perception of self.²

Global Economy

For the major multimedia conglomerates, all located in Western core nations, the evolving reality is that their domestic markets are pretty well saturated. To create new customers at home is challenging and expensive in terms of advertising, marketing, and promotion. But a new revenue stream is being explored elsewhere. The semiperipheral and peripheral developing nations represent a new and vast frontier.

In 2000 the global gross domestic product of non‐core nations was 20%. By 2012 it had risen to 38%, and it is predicted to approach 50% by 2020. Two nations alone – China and Brazil – will drive much of the growth. For example, in Brazil four of the top five all‐time feature films box office hits are American: Titanic, Jaws, The Towering Inferno, and E.T. Only one Latin American film, produced by Embrafilme, makes the top‐five list. This is why Hollywood is looking for international hits for future growth. A good example is the five installments of The Twilight Saga, which has earned close to $3 billion worldwide, most of it coming from sales outside North America. The same can be said of Disney’s expansion strategy and its continuing growth in Asia, or the fact that all of the world’s largest advertising agencies have offices in over 100 nations. The dynamic global economy is driving decision‐making across the media spectrum, and its role and force will only increase over time.

This book has covered the major stakeholders across the communication, media, and advertising sectors. The information has been updated in every chapter. But that is only part of the scene. The other part consists of the almost daily mergers, acquisitions, and inventions, with the inventions frequently leading to new companies, such as Amazon, eBay, or Google. There has been a shift from personal computers to mobile devices and tablets. What impact that may have on traditional networks has yet to be determined. Basically, the broadcasters have sold eyeballs and ears – called audiences – to advertisers. With the audience now able to access content from various mobile sources, and skip the advertisements, a new model will emerge to tap the revenue stream, or else the business may fail in the long run.

Two examples are the proposed spin‐offs by Time Warner and Disney. Time Warner is in the process of dividing product lines into two separate companies: one will focus on television and film production units and the other, to be named Time Inc., on print publications. Some of its iconic brands are People, Time, Sports Illustrated, and In Style. Time Warner hopes the move will bring strategic clarity to both companies. In March 2019, Disney acquired 20^th Century Fox, Fox 2000 Pictures, and Fox Search Light Pictures for $71.3 billion. The move by Disney is to add a vast new library of video content as it seeks to compete in the video‐streaming market, taking on Netflix.

Yet across the print spectrum the clear trend is falling sales as well as revenues. The splitting of print from video may set a strong precedent across the entire industry, as print entities look more and more like dinosaurs. Michael Wolff, media analyst for US Today, sums up the situation:

Print, at the nadir of its 600‐year history, is about to be tested further … Print is a technological embarrassment … Arguably, too, big media threw print over the side of the boat to digital, letting it become a loss leader. Certainly, it has defended video with vastly more wiles and aggression.³

As outlined in the early chapters, international communication theory is going through a transformation. Earlier attempts at theorizing have failed to develop models or research agendas that match the reality of the contemporary role of global communication. Theories of modernization, dependency, and cultural imperialism have failed to satisfactorily explain global communication. The old theories only explain part of the global picture.

The theoretical failings are partly a function of three related factors. The first is the end of the Cold War and the corresponding decline in influence of socialist media critics, whose ideas and rhetoric are no longer relevant. The second is related to numerous technical advances such as the new major global communication phenomenon, convergence, digital environments, smartphones and tablets, the Internet, and the reach of the latest satellites. The third is the emergence of several major global communications stakeholders, many of which are owned and controlled by companies outside the United States. European countries, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and others have major stakeholders in this important expanding sector. Collectively, these factors have led to the need to reanalyze and reformulate the theoretical underpinnings of the discipline of international communication. That is what this book is all about. It proposes a new theoretical perspective that unites world system theory (WST) with ECT. This combination places the discipline on a contemporary theoretical foundation for the purpose of explaining the global communication landscape. Various activities continue to increase the need for understanding the various components that collectively influence international communication. The preceding chapters cover the salient features as well as the expanding globalization of the corporate giants in this field. Even though some of the stakeholders shift, through mergers and so on, the underlying core analysis (WST and ECT) as laid out in this book remains viable and credible.

Before reviewing these components, remember that the impact on international communication of the end of the Cold War should not be underestimated. First, much of the research undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s focused on issues or media content that had a distinct ideological focus and slant which emphasized the dichotomy between capitalist and socialist worldviews. This outmoded dichotomy renders many of the studies and their conclusions marginal or suspect in the new post‐Cold War environment. Second, the volume of international news was higher during the Cold War because many publishers, editors, and journalists set their priorities according to the Cold War dichotomy and resulting international tensions. It was a great deal simpler for editors when the thrust of US foreign policy could be summed up in two words: “stop communism.” Third, with that old dichotomy almost invisible, the interest and attention paid to international news has shifted because of terrorism and 9/11. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, international news came back on the media’s radar big‐time. The global war on terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq – the trifecta of agenda‐setting – reclaimed the front pages and facetime of television news around the globe. Fourth, as the global economy continues to expand through a series of mergers and acquisitions in the communications and other sectors, we would expect global business news coverage to increase in order to monitor the expanding global economy. Finally, the United States is looking for a new role within UNESCO; for a number of years it has also played a precarious role within the United Nations, including withholding its substantial financial dues for a considerable period in the 1990s.

Rather than promoting global organizations and encouraging greater multilateral cooperation through the United Nations and specialized UN agencies and organizations, the United States has never appeared as either a team player or a major leader in multilateral organizations. This US attitude is anomalous considering that the vast majority of global corporations are headquartered in the United States. US corporations have the greatest vested interest in global peace and stability, as well as in economic and monetary systems that are functional and stable. Yet with the end of the ideological confrontation and a reduction in serious international threats, the US government seeks only a peripheral role, if any, in almost all global agencies that influence, examine, monitor, or set rules affecting international communication. In some cases, isolationists in Washington have adopted a fortress mentality, or only support global communication policies that clearly benefit the United States, frequently at the expense of other nations. (See further discussion of this later in the chapter.)

New World Information and Communications Order

The New World Information and Communications Order (NWICO) dominated international communication debates for several decades. A combination of newly independent nations, many of which were former colonies of core nations, as well as the ideological interests of communist republics, propelled the issue of news flow and the role of the mass media into a contentious position. Industrialized core countries view the press as independent and nongovernmental – that is, as broadcasting and communication corporations owned by public shareholders, as well as delivery systems. Although the shrill ideological rhetoric of the supporters of NWICO has faded, the current process is clearly not a balanced one, when the underlying issue of what determines international news flow is examined more closely.

Global mass media do not work in a vacuum; they work in an environment in which certain factors dominate the decision‐making process, which virtually guarantees that certain news will be covered extensively whereas other news will be virtually ignored. For example, two broad roles have emerged from global media studies that account for a great deal of what does or does not get covered: gatekeeper roles and logistical roles.⁴ Examples of gatekeeper impacts include wire service decision‐making, negative news such as a tsunami, or the coups‐and‐earthquakes syndrome. The logistical impacts include economic interconnectedness and cultural affinity, such as being a former colony, speaking the English language, or regionalism. From a straight economic perspective, much of what happens in peripheral nations is of little monetary consequence to core nations. The major exceptions are significant deviances from the norm, such as when there are major earthquakes, coups, tidal waves, or civil war, particularly if the event is covered by CNN. News from peripheral, developing, nations reaches the front pages or television sets in industrialized core nations only when the news is bad. Otherwise, the vast number of nations in the peripheral zone receives no media attention at all year after year.

Electronic Colonialism Theory

Electronic colonialism theory⁵ posits that cultural products produced, created, or manufactured in another country have the ability to influence, or possibly displace, indigenous cultural productions, artifacts, and media to the detriment of the receiving nations. On one level, ECT examines economic transactions through which a number of large multinational communication corporations engage in the selling of culturally embedded goods and services abroad. These corporations view the transactions as revenue‐producing activities that increase market share and maximize profits for them and their shareholders. All of this is accomplished in unison with other firms, particularly advertisers, and multilateral agencies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), ITU, UNESCO, or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). ECT also looks at the social and cultural impacts of these economic activities. Their effects include attitude formation, particularly among young consumers who seek out foreign cultural products, ranging from comic books to music, videos, and cellular phones, which represent distant cultures and dreams – products that have been designed in a totally different environment and culture.

ECT provides the theoretical backdrop for examining the long‐run global consequences of core nations’ multimedia offerings in semiperipheral and peripheral nations. It provides a means for examining and understanding some of the broader issues, particularly in emerging nations, concerning the plethora of cultural products, messages, and industries from a global perspective. The major communication industries tend to be located in a few wealthy core nations, whereas their customers are dispersed around the globe and come from different linguistic, social, economic, religious, and political environments. ECT speculates that these differences will over time shrink in favor of the producing nations, which frequently work in English. This movement toward English as the language of the “global village” even applies to the European Union. The only language that most Europeans speak, other than their native tongue, is English. Most meetings, including academic conferences, across Europe are increasingly being conducted in English. Many European MBA programs are taught in English with textbooks in English.

As it attempts to find a new transnational identity, Europe still has no major global players in the Internet domain. Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, Ask.com, and Lycos are all American companies with a global footprint. The European Union has established a number of programs to correct this situation none of which has managed to get enough traction to be considered a threat to the above firms.

Three important factors are evident in Table 15.1. First, all these companies are located in a single zone – the core region; not even one is from the semiperipheral zone. Second, the language of the global media is English and over time this will continue to be even more so. Third, except for the BBC, all have and need to have a strong presence in the crucial US market.

Over time, most of the corporations described in the preceding chapters will have more customers and make more revenue outside the nations in which their head offices are located. They are truly global and not national entities.

Let us look at two examples to illustrate this point. First, more corporations are moving toward a single, global strategy in their advertising. Firms such as the Ford Motor Company are seeking to consolidate their advertising and marketing expenditures within a single advertising agency with a global reach and workforce. The Ford advertising budget is over $1 billion a year. This requires a vast number of employees from Ford’s advertising agency – the WPP Group of the United Kingdom⁶ – to carry out an effective global marketing and advertising campaign. Only a few years ago, large corporations such as Ford would have utilized perhaps half a dozen agencies in various parts of the world to carry out their corporate advertising. Now they view this fragmentation as both too expensive and counterproductive.

The second example is Coca‐Cola,⁷ which is a $2 billion account for Interpublic Group of New York. Coca‐Cola’s off‐shore sales exceed the domestic distribution of its global brand. Previously, Coca‐Cola had over 30 advertising agencies handling its products around the world. Now it is attempting to focus on a global strategy and a global message in order to increase foreign sales substantially.

The purpose of providing these two examples is to make the point that the purpose of global activities on behalf of major corporations is to maximize sales and thus profits in more and more nations around the world. These nations and customers are concentrated in other core as well as semiperipheral regions.

Basically, ECT explains the phenomenon of a dominant Anglo‐Saxon paradigm which, through the English language, has been spread globally through two primary means. The first, the British Empire, provided the base for what would lead to the current domination of media industries by primarily American firms. The empire took British literature and culture, the model of the BBC, Reuters, and the English language and spread them around the world. The second force is the contemporary global media scene, which is dominated by Hollywood movies, American and British music and textbooks, CNN, the Associated Press, Western syndicated television series and popular culture, major Internet host sites such as Google, and the English language. The rapidly growing video streaming sector is dominated by Windows Media Player, Apple, RealPlayer, and Adobe Flash. That is why non‐English speaking nations are at a loss as to what to do about the long‐term implication of ECT, or how they can create a global winner in the media and technology arenas.

World System Theory

World system theory⁸ is a means of viewing global activities in the international communication field from a theoretical perspective. WST basically divides the world into three major sectors: core, semiperipheral, and peripheral. Core nations, which are relatively few in number, exercise vast economic influence and dominate relationships and transactions with the other two zones. The United States, the European Union, and Japan are some of the dominant stakeholders in the core group. This group has the power to define the rules, timing, and content of transactions with nations or regions in the other two zones. Some current core nations, such as Australia, Norway, Canada, and New Zealand, are becoming increasingly concerned that they may slip into the semiperipheral zone if they are not able to attract, finance, and keep their information industries, entrepreneurs, and educated workers. The impact of News Corp shifting from Australia to the United States is an example of how central the leading core nation, the United States, is to the global economy. Barnett and Salisbury examined WST with reference to communication and information studies. Looking at data from the international telecommunication network, they conclude:

The results indicate that the network is composed of a single group with the United States and the other Western economic powers at the center and the lesser developed countries at the periphery. A nation’s centrality in the network is significantly correlated with its GDP per capita.⁹

There are a substantial number of semiperipheral nations. They interact with core nations but currently lack the power and economic institutions to join the elite core group. China, Mexico, Brazil, India, and some of the Middle East nations are trying to reposition themselves as core nations. Some other semiperipheral nations are attempting to fast‐track their entry into the core region by requesting membership in the European Union. That is why the current EU community is likely to grow to 30 or so nations over time.

Finally, the peripheral zone is made up of developing nations. These nations and regions have relatively little, if any, power, and their economic dealings with the semiperipheral and core nations benefit these two last zones. Many African, Latin American, and most Asian nations belong to the periphery. They are basically exploited by the other zones; they have few media exports, little connectivity to the Internet, little education, little technology, poor health, poor literacy rates, and much poverty.

World system theory’s characterization of the global nations provides a theoretical framework for addressing the question of why communication industries located in core nations have the market and economic advantage in dealing with the other two zones. To some extent, WST is an extension of the one‐way flow argument developed decades ago, but when we look at the traffic patterns – whether in music, movies, television series, the Internet, or any other cultural product – clearly the core zone dominates, the semiperipheral is next, and the peripheral is at the very bottom of the hierarchy. All major communication corporations, whether in advertising, print, wire services, movies, electronics, video, or Internet, have their world headquarters in core nations; they have extensive dealings with semiperipheral nations, including purchasing subsidiaries, to insure market penetration, but relatively little corporate presence in the periphery.

The theories of electronic colonialism and world systems together form a continuum which describes and explains the underlying essential elements in international communications. ECT focuses primarily on the impact on or attitudes of individuals and groups. It deals with what happens to individuals when they are repeatedly exposed to foreign‐produced communications that have cultural cachet. The messages they receive convey foreign personalities, foreign dress, foreign history, foreign norms, foreign values, and foreign tastes. Frequently these values are at variance with indigenous cultures and lifestyles, particularly in peripheral nations. These individuals and groups are viewed as customers and, combined or aggregated, they are seen in terms of market share. To a large and growing extent, the goal of global communication corporations is to make electronic colonies of large segments of the population around the globe in order to increase market share and maximize profits. ECT utilizes a cultural lens.

WST moves the analysis into the economic territory that underpins the global trading system within which communication industries operate. WST focuses on the substantial activities and power within communication industries located in core nations, and how they utilize this power for systematic advantage in their economic relationships with semiperipheral nations and peripheral nations. WST focuses more on the macroeconomic and policy dimensions of the corporate decision‐making process, whereas ECT focuses more on the impact of foreign products, ideologies, and software on individuals, and their minds.

Electronic Colonialism Theory Plus World System Theory

Combining the two theories provides the most powerful explanation of the contemporary phenomenon of global communication that is available to students, policy analysts, corporate planners, and researchers alike. The failures of modernization, development, and cultural imperialism theories, as well as other scattered attempts to explain certain narrow, micro segments of the international communication field, have not moved the discipline much beyond either anecdotal impressions or ideologically laced charges. These charges and lack of data to support them are particularly transparent and obvious in NWICO activities. As the role of international communications continues to expand, these two combined theories represent an opportunity for greater insight and understanding of this most significant global phenomenon.

McPhail’s Paradox: The United States, Modernity, and Future Actions

There is no doubt that the United States has the greatest vested interest in the global economy. As a nation‐state it has the largest number of multinational companies, many in the communication sector, which depend on global commerce and transactions as a major source of jobs and income. The United States needs global order and rules to keep its industries functioning and growing. They are the prime beneficiaries of global rules and the global economy. They need the United Nations and its specialized agencies, like UNESCO, WTO, and ITU, to function effectively. But there is within the United States a clear cultural chasm or disconnect between those who are progressive, concerned, and educated and those who feel threatened by change, immigrants, international agencies, and new ideas. But the United States needs the global economy and the global economy needs the United States.

Yet the US population, in general, and the federal government in particular, are among the harshest critics of international agencies. They stand against modernity. They feel threatened by transnational agreements and frequently are in violation of them. The loss of faith in the United Nations is a by‐product of the United States’ frequent circumventing of it. It was out of UNESCO for years and withheld funds to the United Nations for years thanks to Senator Jesse Helms. The United States is one of the most frequent violators of WTO’s rules promoting free trade. The US imposition of steel tariffs is a case in point. In other sectors the United States simply refuses to participate, ratify, sign, or support global measures even though it is a major stakeholder.¹⁰ The Kyoto Protocol, the Law of the Sea, the Mine Ban Treaty, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the International Criminal Court, and other international initiatives designed to produce an orderly, safer, and better world lack a US signature or support.

Rather than promoting international tolerance and cooperation, and furthering global social justice, the United States promotes a narrow, ethnocentric goal of “America first.” The United States projects an image of not wanting to be a global team player. It does not get the bigger picture. Although the most powerful nation on earth, it avoids global leadership roles in the UN system and multilateral organization elsewhere. It is as if it fears the consequences or desires to shun modernity. Yet it is currently is, and is clearly going to continue to be, the nation that should be leading and supporting all global rules, laws, practices, and organizations. All the US‐based multinational communication conglomerates need all of the preceding global rules to work.¹¹

In contrast, Australia, Canada, the Nordic nations, and many others promote social justice through multilateral organizations. Not the United States. Canada, as the United States’ largest trading partner, is a symbolic case study. Canada is in endless trade fights with the United States. The latter is quick to initiate bilateral trade fights across a number of sectors – fish, lumber, steel, beef, and cultural industries. The smaller nation of Canada does not look for special consideration from the United States, but even compromise is outside the rhetoric of the US State Department for its largest trading partner. The United States seeks to crush its Canadian trading partner. It plays hardball at every turn. Even though Canada is a relatively minor actor on the world stage, the United States’ policy strategy is to treat it as an enemy. Never mind that Canada allowed hundreds of US commercial airlines to land in Canada after 9/11, or that Canadian hydroelectric companies routinely assist US states hit by natural catastrophes, or that over 130 Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan. US foreign policy continues to protect and maximize American interests. It is ethnocentric: no compromise, no concessions.

In the new environment of the post‐Cold War era, the US business empire rules. It is no longer the hegemony of the British Empire that rules the seas, but the US empire that rules the global airwaves and most international media. An example is the United States’ complaint to the WTO against Canada over the issue of mainstream culture. Canada, where over 80% of magazine sales are US magazines, had sought a modest relief position. The United States objected since it considers any attempt to protect an indigenous cultural industry as unacceptable. The issue was a “split run” of US‐imported magazines where token Canadian advertising and content were required by Canadian regulations but were strongly protested by US publishers. When is 80% of a foreign market not enough? When it has to satisfy an American media conglomerate in cooperation with the US federal government. The WTO rules in the United States’ favor and the United States now enjoys more than 85% of Canadian domestic magazine sales.

The global economy is the life‐blood of a vast number of American multinational firms; just consider Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Time Warner, Disney, News Corp, and Viacom. Yet who is the first to criticize the United Nations or UNESCO or other international agencies and agreements? And US media like the Wall Street Journal, Fox, Sinclair Broadcasting, the National Review, and the New York Post champion this paradoxical stand. It is not as if they are discussing small nations like Greenland or New Zealand, which would be relatively unscathed if the global trading system collapsed; the United States would be devastated. But they and many in the media, like Sarah Palin, Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Brit Hume, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly, are the biggest complainers across a broad range of issues when it comes to the United Nations, social programs, bilingualism, outsourcing, immigration, global trade, or international agreements. It is clearly a paradox seemingly better understood by foreigners than Americans themselves at all levels of work, government, and the media.

As many core nations move beyond modernity to postmodernity, the position of the United States on the world stage is in stark contrast in terms of its overall response to the possibilities of being a global communication leader.¹² It is more likely to be perceived globally as a rather narrow‐minded, somewhat vindictive, disliked nation in international forums. In the future, how the United States handles the delicate issues of culture, media, and diversity, and participates in multilateral agencies and forums will likely determine the outcome of this paradox. US history is not on its side.

Conclusions

It is difficult to formulate conclusions when dealing with international communications. The field is in a state of flux, and global changes affect it on a daily basis. The three major engines driving the change are innovations in communication technologies, the global war on terrorism, and the global economy. The world is a different and better place because of international communications. Many citizens are better informed, major corporations have experienced success, and employment opportunities have expanded because of the possibilities and potential provided by innovations in international communications. But beyond broad generalizations, there are still a few more specific conclusions that can be drawn from an understanding of the various stakeholders, nations, and global communication corporations. The following four conclusions focus on sovereignty, continued globalization, and the Internet. Clearly, other conclusions may be drawn, but given the rapid pace of change in this sector, the following are the most likely predictions.

First, the audio and video history of international communications has been and will continue to be dominated by US music, television, feature films, and Internet portals. From the likes of Disney cartoons, I Love Lucy, Melrose Place, Dynasty, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Baywatch, Cheers, Star Trek, The Simpsons, and wrestling and detective shows, to Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, House, NCIS, Blacklist, The Big Bang Theory, The Office, and Hanna, American television shows have dominated television sets and now mobile devices around the world. The same is true for CDs, DVDs, and movie screens as well. In fact, DVD sales now represent a major tertiary (following the primary screening on television or in theaters, then syndication rights) source of windfall profits for rights holders. Some of the leading DVD sales that are once again contributing to the financial health of the studios are The Avengers, The Lion King, Star Wars, and Spiderman. Networks and studios are scrambling to put out additional digitized releases of old stock at a rapid rate as most US and other core‐nation homes acquire DVD players or streaming video devices.

The important fact about all this is that no one is forced to watch these shows or listen to the music. There is no gun to anyone’s head to watch American television and movie productions, or to listen to American music. They do it because the scripts, production values and sets, acting or singing talent, animation, and budgets create world‐class programs. Also, foreign buyers from commercial and non‐commercial television networks from around the world flock to New York, Hollywood, and Las Vegas trade shows to bid for the syndication rights to US television network or cable shows and series.

This demand by off‐shore buyers has been increased by the proliferation of new television stations and movie multiplexes, cable systems, satellite channels, DVDs, tablets, and iPods. More individuals in core and semiperipheral countries have more leisure time and disposable income, and are able to understand English, particularly teenagers, and thus contribute to the escalating global demand. Coupled with the Internet, which is American centric, mainly in English, and carries more and more audiovisual content, this tends to ensure the continuing influence of American multimedia conglomerates. This influence is also cultural in nature. Since core nations are highly competitive and already have mature markets at home, the greatest impact of these phenomena is likely to be most prevalent in developing nations. Over the next decade it will be the semiperipheral nations that are the battleground for the stakeholders discussed in this book. Finally, the marketing and advertising budgets of the global media conglomerates are huge. Their sophisticated tactics to attract customers around the world leave little to chance.

As a collective result of the above, the electronic colonization of vast numbers of people continues. Just as the British ruled the world by controlling the seas, so now the United States and a few other core nations rule the airwaves, television and movie screens, mobile media, and the emerging digital universe. The minds of the many, without regard to time or space, are clearly influenced by the flow and content of a vast range of core‐nation media products and options. As a result, ECT is becoming more powerful as a theory for understanding and organizing the impact of global communication over time.

Second, the plethora of transborder activities among major media, advertising, telecommunications, and Internet firms is rendering historic national boundaries, and in some cases policies, obsolete. The ability of US communication firms to transmit information or products globally, as well as for foreign firms to sell their cultural products in the lucrative US market, is making national communication policies and political boundaries an issue of the past rather than the future. For example, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, Euronews, and others go wherever there is news. Time Warner, Disney, Sony, Bertelsmann, Viacom, NBCUniversal, and even the BBC seek foreign markets or audiences where there is a viable consumer base and a potential for profitability. The Internet goes wherever there is a modem, a computer, or any Internet access, which may be hard‐wired or wireless. Thus, as global communication companies, along with their advertising agencies, expand their markets and merge with more and more foreign firms, the concept of a single head office, or of a single nation controlling, taxing, or regulating global communication firms, is less likely. This change in sovereignty received an unexpected boost with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the eventual lessening of international tension that was prevalent during the Cold War. There were no longer two dominant superpowers, each with enormous arsenals of propaganda and weapons to protect their nation‐states as well as those of their allies. During the 1990s a vacuum emerged as only a single global power remained – the United States. Into this vacuum moved the major stakeholders in the global economy. Multinational corporations simply usurped economic power and some political power in order to promote their interests across national boundaries. For example, today several multinational corporations are more powerful and have greater reach and greater influence than any nation in the periphery. Google is a prime example. We now live in a world where a single individual, for example Bill Gates of Microsoft or other Internet entrepreneurs, are wealthier than the entire group of nation‐states in the periphery. It appears that although the concept of the nation‐state has lasted about 600 years, technological innovations are now defying it. This phenomenon will push multinational organizations and transnational regional agreements into ever more important roles, because domestic and national control are now clearly pre‐Internet phenomena. Institutions such as the United Nations, UNESCO, ITU, WTO, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), OECD, and the European Union are willingly adopting entirely new regulations, currency, and ways of doing things in the post‐sovereignty era. This is the post‐sovereignty reality. Yet at the same time, many of these same firms and phenomena, such as the Internet and mobile devices, are fueling a resurgence of nationalism and localism, and some hope that they are a means of protecting and reinforcing indigenous cultures, groups, and languages.

Third, a fundamental aspect of the global economy will dominate the current and future global landscape of international communications. Specifically, the economies of scale are driving substantial corporate mergers and acquisitions.¹³ This is true of every aspect of the cultural industries phenomenon, starting with advertising agencies and moving on to global media, wire services, and Internet corporations. Old media in particular, for which print products are the predominant revenue generators, will have to either acquire new media themselves, be bought out by some aggressive new media entrepreneur, or fail. There will be no standing still in the global communication sector. Stakeholders will either move aggressively to expand market share through innovation, mergers, and acquisitions, or they themselves will become targets for either friendly or hostile takeovers. The global economy is not user‐friendly or cost‐effective to small players in the communication sector.

The transfer of concepts, philosophies, and practices of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization across all core and semiperipheral nations has meant that the communication sector, which tended to be focused mainly within nation‐states, has now taken on global dimensions. This is true across all elements of the industry – advertising, media, both audio and video, as well as in technology, particularly the Internet and mobile media. The leading nation in the globalization phenomenon is the United States, but the European Union and Japan have also been extremely active in the globalization process. This is particularly true in two ways:

1. The activities and strategic plans of Japan’s Sony, Germany’s Bertelsmann, France’s Publicis, and the United Kingdom’s BBC and WPP are informing and influencing others as to how to compete in the global economy.
2. All major European communication firms recognize that they must have some presence in the United States in order to be an effective global stakeholder.

All major communication industries, regardless of national origin, have identified the North American market as essential for major stakeholder status in the globalization process. Finally, another aspect of globalization is the combination of old and new media. The merger of AOL and Time Warner, despite its missteps, defines the phenomenon, but it also reinforces and expands the globalized role that all communication industries need to identify, deal with, and ultimately take on.

The globalization of the communication industry has several consequences. First, the original thrust of cultural imperialism was too loudly critical of the Hollywood feature film industry. This is now an uninformed perspective, because Hollywood is no longer totally owned by US interests. Instead, foreign communication conglomerates such as Sony of Japan and Bertelsmann of Germany have substantial global media holdings. The global communication industry is not a monolithic empire, but rather a phenomenon that is now widely dispersed among core nations, with a few semiperipheral nations desperately trying to obtain core‐like status through their own expansion via select mergers and acquisitions, particularly in the film industry. Within the communications sector, strategic planning is about global planning, not domestic or national planning.

Fourth, the role of the Internet is still evolving. Just a few decades ago the Internet was a relatively isolated technical phenomenon for which scientists and other experts were still developing key components and applications for scientific or primarily industrial applications. Two decades later, the Internet has become a major phenomenon affecting global communication and commerce in unheard‐of ways. The volume of usage, the depth and breadth of users worldwide, and the dramatic impact on mobile devices, e‐commerce, e‐learning, and e‐public policy are astonishing. Yet, in spite of its significant role across core nations in particular, the Internet is still in its infancy. The development of the Internet today is similar to the invention of the printing press, the early days of the assembly line, or the early applications of the computer chip. We are in the early phase of what will become a mature industry, which will likely eventually be replaced by some other technological invention or by a mix of technologies and other factors.

One other significant aspect of the Internet is that it has empowered the individual to make different choices in different ways. Individuals may obtain news directly from the Internet without the filtering of publishers, editors, or journalists. Or they can create their own blogs or vlogs and seek an audience for their musings. Individuals anywhere on the planet can purchase cultural products or view them on their devices without leaving their home, school, car, or place of business. This phenomenon is not just available to individuals in a single or a few nation‐states; it is a globally dispersed phenomenon in which geography becomes irrelevant, particularly as wireless Internet connections pop up around the globe. The prevalence of the Internet is related to the issue of sovereignty because the information on the Internet is as portable as the technology itself. Industrial era concepts such as space, location, control, bricks and mortar, and monopoly are marginalized in the age of the Internet.

Finally, as evidenced by mergers across the stakeholders, the communication industry recognizes that multinational conglomerates will become the model and new benchmark for successful global communication stakeholders. This will involve a blurring of traditional boundaries of all communication sectors, as the global economy forces the application of the Internet into every segment of the international communication market. The digital output and world of core nations will speed the Internet into homes and villages around the globe in record time. Over time, more semiperipheral nations will mature into core nations, and then the issue will become how and which peripheral nations will move into the semiperipheral zone. The cutting edge of technological innovations influencing the Internet, however, will continue to appear first and quickest across core nations.

As people flock to mobile media capable of video streaming and as cable networks continue to create award‐winning shows, the fragmentation of the audience that was once the territory of networks will cause some major rethinking in order to even survive in the new era. One network, Disney’s ABC, is attempting to get ahead of the curve and competition. In 2013 they announced:

The Walt Disney Company has an app in the works that may render Hulu passé for some people. The app will live stream ABC programming to the phones and tablets of cable and satellite subscribers, allowing those subscribers to watch “Good Morning America” on a tablet while standing in line at Starbucks, for instance, or watch “Nashville” on a smartphone while riding a bus home from work. With the app, ABC, a subsidiary of Disney, will become the first of the American broadcasters to provide a live Internet stream of national and local programming.¹⁴

What is the Relationship of All This to ECT?

In general, communication media carry two sets of values; the one is the impact of the hardware itself;¹⁵ the other is the software or content. It is the spread and impact of core‐manufactured content of all genres that electronic colonialism is concerned with. Technology itself is not neutral.¹⁶ For example, the use of computers is guided by essential codes which must be followed and which alter how users obtain information. But setting aside the hardware and looking at the software leads to this observation: core‐based, mostly American, media carry cultural and linguistic (mostly English) values. These values cut across a number of different attitudes and behaviors, depending on the receiver, for example young children become Disney or Sponge Bob fanatics, or teenagers switch from their own local music to the latest imported hits on MTV.

But there is a deeper meaning conveyed by this entire new media, particularly in peripheral and poorer regions of the world. Over time and with increasing consumption of media fare, they want to become like us. They want our clothes and lifestyle, and they seek the good life that they can see us enjoy. I realize that there is no study confirming this, but there are traces of this phenomenon in some of the empirical studies.¹⁷ We know that, with the reunification of Germany, the democratic West did not want to become like the communist East; rather the East wanted to become like the West. They wanted freedom, choice, better lives, and access to even more media and popular culture. This package also comes with democracy and free‐enterprise businesses. The East Germans learned all this by watching and listening to British and American shows, movies of all sorts, and music from jazz to the Beatles. The television series Dallas and Dynasty did more to undermine communism than all of the US propaganda campaigns. The same overall picture is also true of the other former communist countries which stampeded to become members of the open and democratic European Union after the end of the Soviet Union. Here is the essential point and connection with ECT. Spreading democracy around the world at the end of a gun simply does not work. Declaring people enemy combatants, using drones, and putting them in jails like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo not only does not work but actually increases recruitment of more radical enemies of the US and other core nations. What appears to work is spreading mass media to other nations through a broad range of public diplomacy initiatives. The more foreign nations consume modern communication, the more they will want to be like us. That is why some foreign nations and some religions ban or shun Western media. They understand that Western media bring with them Western values and show people enjoying freedom. The Internet is China’s, Iran’s, and other authoritarian and military regimes’ worst nightmare.

Finally, we realize that those in the cultural imperialist camp and cultural purists from around the world will lament any increase in American‐style media and culture around the world, but mass media do work to spread the message and mechanisms of choice. They promote the image of a better life. But as long as the military‐industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us of continues to hijack both dollars and policy concerning global matters, then making the world safer is one of the last things the current post‐9/11 approach will achieve.

Some Emerging Issues

Predicting what the global media landscape in the future is likely to be is a challenge. Yet one emerging trend involves streaming video services. They collectively take traditional network viewers away from network offerings. To start with, the largest streaming service in the world is a Chinese firm, iQiyi. But for most of the English‐speaking world, the emerging giant is Netflix. Working in over 190 countries, it has a strategic plan to seek global domination and they are well on their way. For the fall of 2018, Netflix added over 1 million American customers but close to 6 million globally. India alone has over 5 million customers already. By 2030 Netflix predicts that they will have 360 million global subscribers annually. Netflix plans to do this by spending 8 to 10 billion each year on original content.

They are not the only services. Other streaming services like Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, Hulu, Sling TV, HBO Now, Philo TV, Play Station Vue, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV app, and You Tube TV, are collectively going to ramp up their original offerings. They will make the historic national networks lose more market share. There will be additional new entrants in the future which will apply more pressure on the traditional television model.

Collectively these video‐streaming services will fragment the tradition audiences for the networks around the globe. The networks will have to reconfigure and will likely have to narrow fare to sectors such as news or sports. Recently, HBO and Netflix won 23 Emmy Awards each; it is an indication of their impact which is likely to increase as networks lose more and more audiences and advertising to streaming services and other media. Ten or twenty years from now the global media landscape will be much different.

Other Trends

First, the on‐going transition toward digital, web‐based, and mobile media has moved control from governments, agencies, and NGOs to tech‐based e‐commerce companies, such as Alibaba, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Netflix. All are profit‐driven companies seeking global presence and profits.

Second, the growth of digital technological infrastructures and the use of lightweight technologies, such as smartphones, have served to reduce the digital divide at an astonishing rate. Also, non‐Hollywood stars from developing regions are getting global exposure through social media and video‐sharing sites.

At the same time, major increases in budgets for films in places like India, Nigeria, Japan, Canada, Turkey, the Philippines, and China have served to lessen the need to import American programming. In particular, both Turkey and the Philippines are exporting their telenovela dramas across South America.¹⁸ Other newer firms, such as Facebook, Google, and Spotify have changed the global landscape.

Third, the advertising world is having a hard time competing and keeping up with such firms as Facebook, Google, Spotify, and music‐streaming services. As well, governments are having a difficult time dealing with the same social media services. As advertising shifts to digital media, it represents a challenge to the ad industry and governments alike.

Fourth, the overall issue of data privacy is gaining attention in a number of nations. A good example is India with a population of 1.3 billion. In 2018 they passed a law/regulation that requires all foreign companies, such as American Express, Visa, Mastercard, Facebook, PayPal, and Discover to only store personal data in India and not in any external nation. Facebook alone has 250 million users across India. In India the legislation is referred to as “data localization” whereas the US is calling for the free flow of data across borders.

India has another range of policy options about social media as well as e‐commerce firms under consideration. This is but one nation taking action on behalf of its citizens, but there are many others in various ways examining similar actions, such as the EU, which has been vigilant in monitoring American high‐tech companies.