7
Cultural dependency and the mass media
J.O.BOYD-BARRETT
The focus of this chapter is on the role of the mass media in the poorer countries of the world, how the functions of the media relate to one or more definitions of ‘national development’, and especially on whether and how the media serve as channels for inter-cultural ‘invasion’ of the poorer countries by the more affluent and powerful nations. In other words, the central theme is the role of the mass media in relations of cultural dependency between nations. The title might suggest to some that this theme belongs in the study of ‘inter-cultural communication’. But others might argue that the heart of the problem lies in the imbalance of power between nations. Either way, this chapter can do little more than signpost some issues that are central to the question of the contribution of the media to dependency. At the same time it should be kept in mind that cultural dependency can also reflect, and may reinforce, imbalances of socioeconomic power among the affluent nations, or among cultures within nations. Nor must it be assumed that the mass media are necessarily the most significant contributors to cultural dependency, let alone to other forms of dependency.
FROM IMPERIALISM TO DEPENDENCY
Space is insufficient here to examine the concept of ‘dependency’ in any detail. To some readers the term ‘imperialism’ may be more familiar. But ‘imperialism’ is strongly associated with the act of territorial annexation for the purpose of formal political control. ‘Dependency’ theory asserts that national sovereignty is not a sufficient safeguard against the possibility of de facto control of a nation's economy by alien interests. In most Marxist theory, imperialism is regarded as an inevitable outcome of capitalism. There is no essential reason in dependency theory why the economic and political interests of the communist superpowers should not sometimes also distort or stunt the autonomous development of poorer nations. Imperialism, in Marxist theory, can be superseded only by international socialism. In contemporary dependency theory there is a greater element of doubt as to whether the circle of dependency processes, whereby the structural imperatives of developed economies enslave the weaker, is or is not absolutely vicious, and as to whether significant change is possible within the existing international order. In this paper it will be taken ‘as read’ that there is substantial evidence to show that many weaknesses in the economies of poorer nations are partly caused by and sometimes reinforced by the political and commercial interests of the stronger economies. But no position will be taken a priori as to the long-term inevitability of dependency, or as to the significance of media communication in relation to dependency.
Outline of the argument
The purpose of this paper is first to look at the major different approaches to the role of mass media in what, for the sake of convenience, will loosely be termed ‘Third-World development’. It will be suggested that these approaches reflect different underlying ideologies. It will be seen that for both ideological and technological reasons there is considerable debate as to what constitutes the appropriate range of phenomena to which the study of the media and dependency should confine itself. A brief account will then be given of the different ways in which inter-cultural penetration is found to occur. Certain shortcomings in the evidence will be discussed. It will be suggested that a key factor in any evaluation of the role of the mass media in the process of ‘cultural dependency’ is the significance to be attributed to the power of any state or government apparatus to combat this process. Many attempts at such evaluation tend, as a result of the kind of questions they ask, to select or give undue weight to evidence which will support a condemnatory attitude. A more fruitful line of investigation may be to review and evaluate the kinds of claim which some western consultants originally made in support of the harnessing of the mass media to developmental objectives.
THE POLITICS OF A CHANGING PARADIGM
Nordenstreng and Schiller (1979) identified three successive paradigms in the study of the relationship between communication and development. In the first of these the emphasis was on the contribution of the mass media to the promotion of western-style (capitalist) development. I will term this the ‘missionary’ approach. A second paradigm sought to expose the more evident elements of ethnocentricity of the first, and to relate the mass media to different models of development. This may be labelled the ‘pluralist’ approach. But a third and more recent school of thought took the view that there could be no real understanding of the media unless priority was given to an understanding of the fundamental relationship between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ economies, ‘the international socio-politico-economic system that decisively determines the course of development within the sphere of each nation’ (my emphasis). This paradigm I will tag ‘totalistic’.
Corresponding sociological models
Each approach or paradigm corresponds with one of three major sociological models of society. The ‘missionary’ approach develops from structural functionalism. Functionalism tended to reify certain postulated features of complex industrial societies as essential for their reproduction and survival. This in turn encouraged the assumption that industrialization would be facilitated in other societies if these essential features were in some way engendered. The media ‘missionaries’ sought to transplant western media technologies to the poorer economies so that one day these economies would be facsimiles of the western economies. In sociological theory, functionalism was superseded by Neo-Weberianism which reacted against the functionalist reification of society and against the inability of functionalism to explain social change. Neo-Weberianism gave primacy to conflict as a driving force of change, and in particular, the conflict between groups for income, power and status. In doing so, it ‘rediscovered’ motive, interest, and perception, and ‘redelivered’ society to human beings. But it could also be seen to legitimate a pluralistic view of society as made up of equally competing and bargaining groups, a society in which belief-systems could operate independently as sources of change. There are similarities here, therefore, with what I have called the ‘pluralist’ approach to the study of the relationship between communication and development. While it pays equal regard to different modes of development, this approach may underestimate the extent to which the pattern of development in any given economy may be determined by a stronger economy. Thus it precludes the kind of analysis advocated by the media ‘totalists’ whose view of society derives from neo-Marxism, in which all social relations are seen in terms of their derivation from the mode of production.
TOTALIZATION’ AND THEORY DEVELOPMENT
The major strategic consequence of the ‘totalistic’ approach in the study of the mass media and ‘development’ is that it greatly widens the range of phenomena that must be considered essentially relevant. The theoretical core of analysis is located at ever higher levels of global social structure. In Schiller's work, as represented in Chapter 2 of the 1979 volume, the theoretical core is located in the relationship between the multi-national corporations and the global market economy. (The relationship between multi-nationals and nation states, on the other hand, is seen as relatively unproblematic: governments of parent nations and élites of host nations simply work in support of these giant enterprises.) In this scenario, transnational media are seen as constituting the ‘ideologically supportive informational infrastructure for the MNC's’ (Schiller, 1979, p. 21). Thus in addition to the generalized informational activities in which all such enterprises engage (e.g. generation and transmission of business data, export of management techniques), there are various categories of trans media support activities, most important of which are advertising agencies, market survey and opinion polling services, public relations firms, government information and propaganda services and traditional media.
It is perhaps significant that traditional mass media are relegated to such a low position in this hierarchy (with the implication that they are mere creatures of advertising agencies) and that some other forms of sociocultural imperalism are barely considered. This is partly explicable in terms of the rhetorical usefulness of highlighting the less familiar features of cultural dependency, but Schiller's agenda may also, in its ordering of issues, serve to underemphasize the role of state regulation.
A second major expansionary pressure upon the framework of analysis is represented by the pace of technological change, which may in turn be related to the development and commercialization of innovations in the defence and aerospace industries of the major economies (Mattalart, 1979). Satellite communication, for instance, introduces the growing potential for direct broadcast television and greatly complicates the task of global allocation of communication space. The rapid but uneven pace of satellite development intensifies the conflict between those countries that lag in technology but wish to preserve access for future use, and those which believe that existing capacity should be fully exploited by those with the means to do so. Developments of computer technology and digital communication greatly intensify the capacity for ‘transborder data flows’ at a pace possibly beyond the ability of international bodies to regulate. The ‘electronic’ revolution in the dissemination of information, whereby the same digital signal can be transformed into a number of different final formats requires that equivalent attention be given to both ‘traditional’ media (for example, newspapers, television) and more recent dissemination technologies (for example, home terminal publishing, videotext) (Hamelink, 1979; Marvin, 1980). The task presented by the need for international regulation of these developments itself represents a further pressure on the framework of analysis, one that requires consideration not simply of the socio-economic structures of dependency, but also of the highly legalistic contexts in which much international bargaining on such matters tends to occur (cf. the proceedings of the World Administrative Radio Conference, 1979, or the UNESCO debate on the final report of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, 1980).
The benefits and costs of ‘totalization’
There can be little question as to the generally beneficial impact that these trends towards ‘totalization’ have had on the quality of media-related theory and insight. For instance, they brilliantly de-neutralize the concepts of ‘development’, ‘media’, ‘technology’, etc., so that the signification of each of these is shown to be profoundly political. Among other things, they alert researchers to the danger of uncritical adoption of western assumptions about which particular vehicles of cultural or media influence are the most ‘significant’: media technology, comics, and advertising, for example, may be just as significant as, respectively, media content, ‘élite’ news, and drama. Totalization’ also alerts researchers to the assumptions about the channels of control which actually carry most influence: in the assessment of communication impact, for instance, an owner cannot be assumed to have more overall influence than an advertiser or supplier.
But ‘totalization’ also brings certain dangers. It not only de-neutralizes the phenomena under investigation, but effectively de-neutralizes itself at the same time. Its emergent priorities are curiously in line with the political strategies and bargaining poses of the nationalist-Marxist alliance of southern nations in their international negotiations with nations of the north. In certain formulations it is ahistorically and naively determinist: thus Nordenstreng and Schiller speak of the ‘decisive determination’ of national development by the global economy. This formulation is as rigid as the structural functionalism which neo-Marxism helped to surmount, indeed more so, in its incapacity to account for change. The totalistic approach adopts too uncritically a relatively simplistic version of dependency theory, in a manner which appears unduly concerned to eliminate as insignificant the machinery of the national state. For example, it is by no means generally accepted that capitalist expansion everywhere or even typically destroyed viable patterns of desirable or indigenous forms of development; nor is it beyond dispute that dominant nations ‘de-capitalize’ peripheral nations or ‘denationalize’ their successful local business in the manner in which dependency theory asserts (Smith, 1979). (‘Decapitalize’ is to direct or deflect indigenous capital or sources of capital away from locally-controlled enterprise and investment. ‘Denationalize’ is to remove the locus of real control of indigenous enterprise from local to non-local interests.) It is still too early to determine what significance should be attributed to the fact that India, for example, has doubled its food production in twenty years; is, in 1980, the eighth largest industrial country in the world, with the third largest pool of technically trained manpower; and has exerted considerable government control over industrial development. Simplistic referencing to dependency theory is not enough. What is required is a two-way process in which grounded theoretical research informs and modifies dependency theory as much as it draws sustenance from it.
FORMS OF INTER-CULTURAL MEDIA PENETRATION
The remainder of this paper is concerned primarily with the inter-cultural dimensions of traditional mass media processes and with particular reference to the poorer economies of the world. The discussion will be contextualized, where appropriate, in relation to the range of factors discussed in preceding paragraphs. Perhaps the most overt form of intercultural media penetration is the ownership of national media by multinational interests. Linked to, but by no means coincidental with this, is the question of the locus of formal managerial control. But regardless of ownership or formal control, inter-cultural penetration may also be exercised by external customers for media services—in particular, the multinational companies which buy advertising space, or any advertisers who channel their custom through multi-national advertising agencies, or both. Both media and advertising organizations may have resort to multinational public relations, market survey, and opinion-poll organizations in order to appraise the size and social composition of media audiences and the potential audience demand for various commodities. Advertising itself ranks as part of programme content and as such exerts influence, but it also exerts influence on the content of other programming. The extent of such influence depends, first, on how far media executives consider it necessary to maximize audiences or to attract certain kinds of audience for the benefit of advertisers; second, on the extent of competition for advertisers’ custom; and third, on the extent of government or professional regulation of the volume and range of advertising. Next there is the question of programme contents that are imported or simply received from extra-national sources. The role of imports should also be seen in the light of the objectives and economics of the exporting organizations. This introduces, for example, questions concerning the conditions of sale: are the sales package-deals or is there collusion between the major exporters to maintain given price levels? The notion of ‘exporter’ should be defined broadly enough to encompass both those organizations whose primary concern is organizational profit, and those whose primary concern is to promote general or specific attitude change in relation to given political, religious or other objectives.
It is not only specific programme contents that are exported. Directly or indirectly there is also the ‘export’ from the stronger economies of particular conceptual models that affect, for instance, prevailing views as to how programme contents should be arranged or presented, or the components which are deemed to constitute an appropriate ‘schedule’ or ‘format’. These models incorporate certain profound assumptions: for example, that certain complexes of media technology should be applied in particular ways. The news-entertainment-advertising mix of the daily newspaper is an instance; likewise, the association of media technologies with certain periodicities of use as in the daily or weekly newspaper, the weekly or monthly magazine, or evening television. But the technology itself, not just its application, is cultural, and occurs in the form that it does for complex social and economic reasons which have to do with the histories of social relations in the metropolitan centres and which embody certain consequences of class relations (as in élite-mass one-way communication). The adaptation of particular kinds of media receiver to given international communication facilities (radio, cable, satellite) raises issues to do with the ownership and control of such facilities, differential rates of access to them, and procedures for international allocation. These considerations overlap with the process of the transmission of situationally-specific professional ideologies from metropolitan to peripheral centres of the world economy, through such means as formal education and training schemes, or simply through constant exposure to imported media products.
Theory or propaganda?
There is almost certainly a good case to be made for the hypothesis that the mass media have, to an as yet unspecified extent, contributed to the complex of processes referred to as dependency. Yet much of the evidence and argumentation is presented as though it were in illustration of an established and incontrovertible fact. There is a rough division, in the catalogue of forms of media-related cultural penetration already outlined, between those which are susceptible to precise measurement (e.g. the number of newspapers owned by multi-nationals; the number of hours of imported television programming in peak viewing times) and those which are not nearly as amenable to positivistic methodologies (e.g. cultural changes attributable to mass media). Yet the weight of evidence for theses of media imperialism often relies heavily on the latter. Caution with respect to available evidence is frequently absent. Instances may be noted where there is no simple acknowledgement of the non-availability of certain kinds of relevant data. Too much weight may sometimes be given to western influences on one particular medium without reference to the general character of all media output or to evidence concerning respective media impacts. The totality of relevant exogenous media influences may sometimes be evaluated in isolation from an evaluation of countervailing indigenous influences. It tends to be assumed that the adoption of any given western media practice represents a stage in the process of social change that would not have occurred solely in response to indigenous pressures. The role of the demand for cultural imports is underemphasized or glibly explained away as ‘created’. Analysis of actual effects or consequences is especially rudimentary. The contours of the debate have perhaps been too much influenced by the Latin American experience, where specifically North American penetration of technology, advertising, lowbrow canned US media fodder, has been especially acute in conditions of relatively low national government regulation. There is a general tendency towards exaggerated claims for media impact. When the particular dangers predicted in relation to one innovation fail to materialize, or do not materialize as unambiguously as expected, attention moves on to the next incipient weapon of imperialism. In the case of direct broadcast satellites, for example, insufficient attention was given by the pessimists to the wide variety of means available to governments for controlling or preventing the reception of such transmissions (for example, by prohibiting the sale of particular kinds of receiver). It is very curious that a phenomenon as pervasive and as elusive as that of inter-cultural media influence should so rarely be seen to contribute at least some positive factors to the process of social change in poorer economies. Finally, in consideration of the macropolitical implications of cultural imperialism, there is often a strange reluctance to speculate on the global consequences of a unilateral decision of one power-block not to thus pursue its interests.
State regulation and resistance
An historical trend which suggests the necessity for a less deterministic model than that suggested by Nordenstreng and Schiller is the marked decline in direct foreign ownership and control of national media systems in many parts of the so-called developing world. This in itself suggests one reason why research interest has shifted to less obvious transcultural media influences. The shift in ownership and control highlights two factors: the importance of state regulation of media control and the declining diversity of media outlets in many ex-colonial territories. Very many of the colonial countries actually enjoyed a wider spread of media diversity than was later allowed by post-colonial regimes. In many British, French and Dutch territories, for instance, there had developed strong anti-colonial or at least indigenous press media pursuing religious, racial, nationalist or more diffuse political and cultural objectives. Many leaders of the first wave of independent states came to power on the back of political news-sheets that they themselves had founded and/or edited. Once in power, many regimes experimented with a measure of press diversity and decontrol, but such experiments hardly anywhere survived for long without severe modification and restriction. Even where foreign interests did retain an ownership presence, their freedom with regard to political and social comment was greatly constrained by a gamut of devices, examples of most of which are to be found in Lent's (1978) description of Asia's ‘completed revolution’, namely, the achievement of state control over the mass media.
Even with respect to many of the less direct forms of trans-cultural media influence, the possibility of state regulation is clearly available. Katz and Wedell (1978) provide instances of countries actively and successfully engaged in reducing the proportions of imported television-fare or foreign radio music on local media networks. Even some of the most subtle of cultural imports (for example, the ‘import’ of the standard western television schedule) are not self-evidently beyond the reforming capacity of any determined government convinced of the desirability of change. Nor is state regulation of media self-evidently inhibited by fear of the loss of advertising revenue, especially where there are few competing outlets for advertising.
But some influences are especially difficult to eradicate. For instance it is argued that television technology inevitably distorts local culture in nonwestern societies. Television cannot easily accommodate the cultural diversity common to marry such societies. ‘Authentic’ local cultural expression requires the full social membership and engagement of those who participate in it, while television permits only a passive viewing of selected elements. Governments of new nation states are often more concerned with the construction and diffusion of a nationally-integrative culture which may borrow familiar elements of traditional cultures but which is designed to transcend their boundaries. Such governments may actively resist attempts to preserve what they may see as the politically destabilizing vitality of diverse cultures. There is, in any case, a tendency on the part of some critics of cultural imperialism to employ the terms ‘authentic’ or ‘traditional’ in respect to local culture in a manner similar to the frequent use of the term ‘community’ in some western countries, that is, with mythological, ‘gemeinschaft’ connotations of cosy togetherness.
It is also true that resistance to inter-cultural media penetration can at times be expensive. For a nation that is committed to television, a decision to reduce dependence on cheap programme imports may well require a much heavier outlay on expensive home productions which, because of poor facilities or inexperience, may seem to lack some of the polished gloss of western soap opera. But the decision to restrict television time, or even do without television, is still available, even if politically difficult. Resources for indigenous media development may be affected by the availability of international advertising. Even where there is no direct restriction on such advertising, however, its availability can be reduced indirectly by policies such as import restriction or nationalization. In Guyana, for instance, where such policies were adopted in the 1970s, the proportion of total media advertising accounted for by non-local advertisers declined from 70 per cent to 10 per cent in the period 1964–76, and this was responsible in part for a deterioration of programme standards, a reduction in newspaper titles and cancellation of plans for expansion of regional broadcast stations (Sanders, 1978).
There can be no adequate evaluation of inter-cultural media penetration which does not take into full account the variability of mass media policies adopted by individual governments. The infrastructure of global communication may be very much the development of, and in the control of, the super-powers. But it does not necessarily determine what happens within particular nations. Nor is it free of internal strains: many western multinational corporations are in competition with one another; there are political and economic conflicts between the more affluent nations; and smaller nations have found ways and means of bringing collective pressure to bear on the more powerful nations.
The danger of assuming a simple one-way responsibility for the shortcomings of the international communication system is illustrated by the case of the major western news agencies, which are frequently accused of ethnocentricity in their handling of news coverage on which most ThirdWorld nations rely. Such criticism tends to underestimate the extent to which the agencies have regionalized their services, the increase over time in the overall volume of news which they provide, and the problems inherent in defining what in fact constitutes adequate regionalization. The major agencies are heavily dependent on the output of national news agencies and the national media, partly because their resources are in many areas thinly spread, and partly because more and more restrictions are imposed upon the news-gathering activities of foreign newsmen. Of equal importance is the willingness of many non-western media to depend on western agency coverage even where alternative courses of action are available. Matta (1979) has demonstrated the reluctance of élite Latin American media to provide independent coverage not only of world news but of continentwide affairs. If there were more independent coverage, the major agencies might better be able to gauge the real nature of Third-World news requirements. A substantial proportion of all world agency news distributed in Latin America is, in any case, gathered in Latin America by Latin American nationals working for the western agencies, transmitting mainly in Spanish. While the agencies are often accused of ignoring authentic ‘Third-World’ angles in news coverage, Matta also gives examples of important development-related stories carried by the world agencies but not used by the Latin American media.
COMMUNICATION AND DEVELOPMENT
It has been suggested that the ‘totalistic’ approach has resolutely concentrated on negative evaluations of western media influence. It is useful, therefore, to review some of the more optimistic claims originally entertained by some western researchers, among others, not because such claims can easily be upheld—far from it—but because the evidence suggests a greater element of ambiguity and diversity than ‘totalistic’ theorists would allow.
Media availability
Any general discussion of media impact should include an assessment of the extent to which populations are actually exposed to the media. The most important factor helping to account for exposure is physical availability of the media. This is still something that cannot be taken for granted in very many of the poorer countries. The major obstacles to media development pertain to market conditions, political insecurity, linguistic diversity, illiteracy, and technology. In the west, the press developed as a form of ‘mass’ communication because it could ‘sell’ large audiences to advertisers, and advertising revenue made it possible to sell newspapers at below-cost levels. In many poorer countries there are relatively small markets for the commodities that major advertisers want to sell. Even the purchasing ability for mass media products themselves is still extremely low in many countries. The conditions of production, and particularly of distribution, are often very much more difficult than in most industrialized economies, for reasons of distance, terrain, shortages of equipment and skills, shortages of foreign exchange. Advertising is directed disproportionately towards the small circulation élite media. This contributes to the information gap between rich and poor, since the greater revenue enjoyed by the ‘élite’ media improves their coverage and presentation. Media diversity is constrained by the nationalization of media systems by governments, which tend to feel threatened by privately-owned media, and which are often the only sources of substantial media investment available. Political insecurity often dissuades governments from attempting to decentralize media systems or from encouraging cultural pluralism through the media. Government control does not of itself help to overcome print illiteracy. If priority has been given to the need to establish centralized systems of communication for the benefit of ‘social order’, the development of broadcasting may be seen to by-pass the need for literacy. The existence of linguistic diversity has in many countries actually helped to sustain the life of the language of the ex-imperial power, given the need for a lingua franca, a language of convenience. The élite media are more likely to adopt the old imperial language, while poorly resourced vernacular papers may have to undertake their own translations of news agency and similar copy. Broadcast media, especially radio, can cater more adequately for linguistic diversity, but the resources for multi-linguistic programming and dissemination may not be forthcoming, especially where linguistic divisions correspond with imbalances of social and political power. Radio is by far the most influential and important mass medium in most poorer economies, but its impact is still restricted by technological constraints—atmospheric sources of reception interference, inadequacy of technical data, inadequate numbers and strength of transmitting stations, etc. The availability of radio receivers did greatly increase with the introduction of transistors, but repair facilities may be non-existent and quality of reception very bad. In most nonindustrialized economies, television is primarily an urban phenomenon, sometimes confined to élite audiences. The total degree of exposure to media for any single individual in most parts of the so-called Third World is far less than the average for citizens of the industrialized economies and this is likely to remain so for some considerable time.
Positive claims for a media contribution to development
The belief that the media would play an important role in relation to national development, in terms both of information dissemination and of attitude change, was promoted by some western researchers in interesting contrast to an established view that in the already ‘developed’ world the media performed a mainly reinforcing role with respect to attitude change. While state regulation of media control in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, for example, was still widely regarded as totalitarian and reprehensible in the west, state control in the ‘developing’ countries won the sympathy of some western apologists who considered it to be the necessary, if sad, price to be paid for political integration and national prosperity, given the conditions of tribalism that were said to threaten the security of new nations. Some research studies had suggested a causal link between media growth and industrialization. It seemed more important to establish the basic media infrastructure, first, than to worry unduly about content.
At least four benefits could be claimed on behalf of the role of the mass media in relation to development. These were that the mass media could, first, break down traditional values thought to be inimical to the process of industrialization and modernization; second, help promote the attainment of an autonomous and integrated national identity; third, assist in the dissemination of specific technical skills; fourth, they could be harnessed to the task of rapid expansion of formal education and improvement of educational attainment in schools.
In the early promotion of these benefits, at least two important general obstacles to success were frequently overlooked. The first of these was the culturally-bound model of development which characterized much of the thinking about the role of the media. Rogers (1976) argued that economic growth did not necessarily have to come about through industrialization. Development was not adequately measured by such questionable devices as GNP, nor was it to be equated with such features as capital-intensive technology or international loans. The western model had failed to bring about the anticipated levels of development in many countries, and even in the west the process of industrialization had brought about grave problems (for example, environmental pollution) as well as benefits. A second obstacle that was overlooked was the wide range of factors that limited actual levels of government or private commitment to development-related objectives. It was assumed either that the mass media, of themselves, would bring about attitude changes conducive to the requirements of a developing society, or that the formal objectives of development were so obvious and so compelling that any right-minded media organization or its government would not hesitate to harness the media to these objectives. But left to themselves, established privately-owned media systems had no motive to engage in development-type programming if profit was to be made in other ways, and if production costs could be cut by reliance on cheap imports of popular programming from western countries. Exposure to such material might conceivably enhance individual empathy, which for Lerner (1958) was a major prerequisite for the acceptance of other aspects of what, in his view, constituted the modern society. But it could just as well breed a consumer-oriented attitude inimical to the requirements of a developing society (Wells, 1972). As for the role of governments, many studies suggested that these were far more likely to intervene in media programming on matters that concerned their own political security than on development-related issues, and that rhetoric was rarely matched by the reality (for example, Barghouti, 1974 and Hachten, 1975). Other relevant factors that were often overlooked included the low pay and status of journalists in many countries, the vulnerability of media systems to the bribery and corruption of political machines, the widespread intolerance of media independence and initiative, and even the corrupt journalism practices which in some countries took the form of blackmailing vulnerable news ‘sources’ (see, for example, Cole, 1975; Jones, 1979; Lent, 1978).
Breakdown of traditional values
In addition to these general obstacles to successful exploitation of the media for developmental purposes, there were many further considerations specific to particular claims. Take, first, the claim that the media could play an important role in breaking down traditional values considered inimical to development. This claim implicitly justified cultural penetration by more ‘developed’ societies, and had a substantial intellectual heritage. Several studies had found a relationship between mass media availability or exposure and other indices of industrialization or ‘modernity’ (see Schramm, 1964). It was hypothesized (Lerner, 1958) that the link was causal, that the mass media contributed to the process of becoming ‘modern’. One possible link in the causal chain lay in the area of attitude change and conceptual skill. This in turn could be related to some studies of western industrialization which had attached considerable importance to social-psychological variables such as in Weber's (1965) description of the ‘protestant ethic’ and its associated syndrome of deferred gratification. (Weber's thesis was discredited by Trevor-Roper (1977), who argued, amongst other things, that many Calvinist entrepreneurs lived far from frugal lives, and that rational capitalism existed in southern Catholic Europe before the growth of Calvinism.) A related application was McClelland's (1961) concept of ‘achievement motivation’, propensity for which was associated with, among many other factors, the content characteristics of traditional children's stories. Lerner (1958) in his study of development in the Middle East identified ‘empathy’ as the crucial modernizing component of the human psyche and defined the concept in terms of a high capacity for rearranging the self-system at short notice. The mass media were important facilitators of this process of interior manipulation.
Elaboration of theory along lines such these was problematic. The model of development, as we have seen, was ethnocentric. Not only did it obscure the reality about some of the conditions of developing countries, but it even obscured the reality of the nature of the so-called developed countries. For instance, certain features that had been considered typical of ‘traditional’ societies and inimical to ‘development’ were to be later identified in ‘developed’ societies. It was not obvious that all or even most ‘traditional’ values were inimical to development: in Japan they were very likely positive facilitators. Nor was it obvious that supposedly ‘modern’ features necessarily facilitated development. Lerner's ‘empathy’ concept might, for example, appear to be a facilitating quality, especially in relation to entrepreneurship and other innovative processes. But it could also be seen as an obstacle in the way of cementing the kind of work discipline ‘appropriate’ for the masses in developed industrial countries. High ‘empathy’ might have a destructive impact on industrial society by generating a critical approach to authority and by kindling an impatience with the constraints imposed by industrialism on certain possibilities for individual development.
One important way the media were seen as being able to promote economic growth through attitude change was in their role as vehicles for the advertising and the display of consumer goods. This, it was believed, would promote consumption, which in turn would promote local industrialization, higher incomes and yet further consumption. But this view was attacked by critics of ‘cultural imperialism’ on the grounds that it greatly underestimated the extent to which, first, production of consumer goods continued to be controlled by or in the interests of the major western-based corporations; and second, the consumer goods in question continued to be largely irrelevant to basic housing, clothing and food requirements of the masses of the people, only serving to draw away existing funds from socially productive investment. Wells (1972) claimed to find empirical evidence to demonstrate the view that the impact of North American television programming in South America was ‘consumerist’: the rewards for sectoral inequality were displayed but the means to attain a more widespread material culture were not. However, an attitude study of adult residents of Barquisimeto, Venezuela (Martin et al., 1979) was unable to find any significant evidence of a high correlation between exposure to mass media entertainment and a consumerist attitude orientation, except possibly among the already well off.
The view that mass media could help to break down traditional values thought to be inimical to development has therefore been found unhelpful in a number of ways. The concept of ‘development’ is itself an especially value-Iaden term; the relationship between given social values and a western model of development is peculiarly complex, and possibly requires a better understanding of both ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ societies than at present exists, if indeed it is still meaningful to refer to either independently of the other. The evidence in favour of the ‘consumerist’ thesis is inconclusive. It is too broad an issue to be determined simply by reference to attitudes. Evaluation of whether a consumerist impact, if such there is, is negative or positive in relation to development, is an especially complex task. Not enough is known of media systems which have been systematically exploited for ‘producerist’ ends to be able to evaluate whether these may be said to have an independent impact in relation to their respective developmental contexts.
Consolidating national identity
The second major claim for a positive media role in relation to development concerns its potential for the establishment of a popular sense of national identity. This potential perhaps has been more widely recognized by new Third-World élites than the media's potential for more specific economic or educational objectives. It would be difficult to argue that nationalized media systems, disseminating news and information of government activities, very often in the absence of any competition, have not achieved some degree of national consolidation. But the simple claim that mass media contribute to national integration and hence to development requires considerable modification.
Even where the mass media have been nationalized, there remains an important conflict, identified by Katz and Wedell (1978) between the exploitation of mass media in order to achieve national integration and the exploitation of mass media in order to bring about changes in attitudes that would hasten the process of modernization. The importance of the mass media in relation to national unity is evident at each of three stages in the development process: the stage of political integration in the early phase of independence, the onset of ‘modernization’, and then the reaction against it. The initial concern for political integration is seen to require a stress on common traditional symbols, or the creation of symbols that are then made to seem commonly traditional. But this use of media proves insufficiently competitive with western-style programming, which is seen either as economically inevitable or as positively related to modernization, or both. Attempts to preserve the ‘traditional’ may not survive the transfer of traditional arts to the new technology of mass media for mass audiences, while resources for local production may be too tight to allow real competition with dubbed imports. The use of media for modernization, unlike its use for national integration, is fundamentally divisive and may cancel out any impact attributable to integrative goals. Modernization sets generation against generation, old élites (for example, tribal elders) against new (for example, urban professionals); it may itself be associated with the newly achieved dominance of a particular tribe or social grouping and in this way can become an anti-integrative symbol against which the disadvantaged, the minority tribes and the dispossessed may be mobilized. There then re-emerges a concern for national integration to overcome such conflicts, and this may involve a deliberate identification of the agents of ‘neo-imperialism’ as the common enemy. This in itself may expose the illusory character of the original claim for a positive relationship between mass media and national integration, inasmuch as the mass media may have been sponsored by western corporations, based on western technology, carried western programming and in other ways illustrated the general socio-economic process of dependency. If integration has been achieved, it may now seem that it has been achieved at least as much in respect to a particular world order as to a particular national system of government.
The claim of many early researchers that the media had an important role to play in the establishment of a national consciousness directly or indirectly endorsed a model of development in which an urban political élite, often advised by international agencies or western governments, determined the goals of society and set about manipulating the masses towards these goals. The very models of broadcasting imported from the west confirmed the notion of heavily concentrated media systems, physically and structurally located close to the centres of political and military power, employing technologies equipped only for one-way communication as in the west. In this sense the claim entailed a basically conservative view of the role of the media. This was then enhanced by the particular contents that governments often used to promote national integration, often involving a focus on inherently conservative national symbols: the presidency, the state religion, an urban and élitist version of ‘national news’, a particular language or group of favoured languages, etc.
Dissemination of skills
The claim that the media could assist in the dissemination of specific technical skills was a considerably more limited and verifiable claim. While it is probable that over time the growing sophistication of dissemination strategies is likely to have greater pay-offs, the specific role of the mass media has been rather more limited than many first anticipated. Early strategies were often based on studies of the diffusion of innovations, which showed that adopters of innovations could be classified according to their receptivity to innovation, and that early adopters could play an important role as opinion-leaders or trend-setters. It was of great importance to identify the characteristics of early adopters, so that these could be sought out as targets for communication about innovations, and so that interpersonal processes could take over in the percolation of the new ideas throughout the community.
This approach was both convenient and simplistic. It was convenient because it meant that field-service agents for agricultural innovation programmes had to concentrate on only a small proportion of the total community. Because early adopters tended to be wealthier and to have larger farms, the impact was greater. The early adopters were also easiest to talk to and persuade. The model was simplistic because it assumed a more homogeneous community than was usually the case: instead of a single set of opinion-leaders, there was usually a stratified community, with opinionleaders in each strata. By concentrating only on the wealthier farmers, therefore, the diffusion approach may have accentuated the gap between rich and poor, because there was no continuous line of influence and because the poor were not sufficiently motivated or were unable to innovate. The poor needed more attention, possibly of a different kind (see Roling et al., 1976). These considerations had important implications for the role of the mass media in diffusion programmes, and raised difficult questions concerning the resources available for highly differentiated approaches.
The idea that a major innovation programme could depend entirely on the mass media alone came to be discredited, certainly. It could not be assumed that governments or private media systems would necessarily make the resources available for media dissemination. More important, effective communication and diffusion was seen to extend well beyond the explicit content of the message and beyond the confines of media organizations. Two important additional considerations involved, first, the situational characteristics of the explicit message, and second, the situational characteristics at point of reception.
Simple provision of the message was insufficient. It had to be provided at a time, in a language or in a style acceptable to the listener, which would make effective comprehension possible and likely. But broadcasting in many ‘developing’ nations had to cater for many linguistic groups, requiring the apportionment of staffing resources and air-space to different groups, with possibly a great reduction in effective listening-time for any one group and considerable content duplication. This meant there was less overall time available for a station to pick up the ‘casual’ listener, and less opportunity for listeners to estabish regular listening habits. Motivation to listen could quickly be dissipated if presentation and reception were poor or inappropriate. In Rao's (1966) study of two Indian villages the number of villagers who mentioned unintelligibility as the reason for not listening to the radio was so high that the author advocated a major change of announcers’ vocabulary. It could be the right language, but the level of abstraction or formality could be too great. Presentation could influence the chances of effective implementation. Kearl (1977) warned against the tendency for ‘scientific’ knowledge to be converted into an unsuitable authoritarian mode of traditional knowledge in the process of dissemination, and argued that more stress should be placed on trial and error procedures.
By the late 1970s, therefore, it was widely considered that the conditions for effective mass communication, in relation to the dissemination of specific technical skills, extended well beyond the communication message itself and involved an important measure of interpersonal communication, at least in those societies where interpersonal communication was still the primary source of non-local information and values. But where there was less dependence on interpersonal communication, the mass media may have become more self-sufficient as effective disseminators (see Schneider and Fett, 1978). The necessary scale of investment for dissemination was considerably greater than allowed for in original models of the media's role in development, and often required greater dependence on the aid programmes of international organizations and western governments.
Media for formal education
Whereas diffusion programmes have generally been concerned with particular kinds of skill or information for adults, it was also claimed that the mass media, especially broadcasting, could achieve rapid improvements in a country's formal educational system and in the numbers it could educate. Schramm (1964) claimed that the mass media could overcome problems of teacher shortage, and could provide a means of education even in areas where there were not yet any schools. Just as in the case of diffusion research, so in respect of educational broadcasting, most of the literature appears to originate from sources committed to these kinds of objective. But there was considerably more caution by the late 1970s than in the early 1960s. This reflected greater experience of the problems of organizational logistics, technology and programme quality. First, the need to deliver specific programme material at a specific time on a stated day to classes of pupils in a particular grade in all schools of a given educational system could cause immense logistic difficulties (Katz and Wedell, 1975), which in the developed countries were only overcome with considerable coordination of services and resources. Nationwide coverage, second, was difficult for transmission reasons, especially in the case of television, which was mostly confined to affluent urban sectors. But even with radio there were many problems related to quality of reception, supply of receivers and maintenance. Many broadcast organizations, finally, found it difficult to infuse the high levels of talent and resources required to sustain quality of programming over time, in order to sustain, in turn, listeners’ motivation and the pedagogic impact of the material transmitted.
Re-interpreting the evidence from a number of early experiments in educational television, Carnoy (1975) argued that educational television (ETV) did not provide instruction that was cheaper than alternative methods of improving education, methods that involved the addition of more trained teachers to the school system; and that the introduction of ETV did not obviate the need to retrain teachers. There was a tendency for the educational benefits to be concentrated in the first year of pupils’ exposure to such programming, and it was uncertain whether these improvements would extend throughout school life. Carnoy was doubtful if such improvements would seem significant if compared, not with traditional educational systems, but with non-ETV innovations in teaching methods. There was also some doubt, he claimed, whether there was a high pecuniary rate of return on investment in educational expansion per se: evidence of the rate of return on increased student attainment indicated that it was greater at the lower levels of schooling than at higher levels, but there was no conclusive evidence that this pay-off compared favourably with other public investments. Nor could it be said that ETV contributed significantly to equalization of opportunity and income in society: in none of the projects he examined did he find any features of design or execution that would have redistributed education itself or the income associated with more schooling.
But the future of broadcasting for education in the ‘developing’ countries is more likely to rest with radio than with television. Jamison and McAnany (1978) identified three objectives for radio in relation to formal education: improving educational quality and relevance; lowering educational costs; and improving access to education. Examining the strategies available for the achievement of these objectives, they concluded that only distance learning (replacing teacher and school) definitely seemed to improve access and reduce cost, but that improvements in the quality of education were not generally associated with this strategy. Their findings also suggested that radio was much less likely to be effective in teaching cognitive skills, work skills and in changing behaviour than it was likely to be effective in motivating and informing. But unless resources were made available to enable motivation to be translated into action, the effective benefit could be negligible.
Katz and Wedell (1975) have argued that ‘extensive’ use of broadcasting is more likely to be successful than ‘intensive’ use. By ‘extensive’ they refer to programming that is not associated with formal education, that is received in private homes in the normal course of broadcast transmissions, and which may take the form either of informational or entertainment matter, but which is designed with certain developmental goals in mind. Intensive use of broadcasting, on the other hand, of the kind reviewed by Carnoy (1975) or Jamison and McAnany (1978), was already on the way to being outdated by the trend towards greater individualization of the learning process, and with advances in educational technology which were adapting to the demand for individualization and flexibility, such as audio and visual cassettes, teaching machines, programmed learning texts, overhead projectors and film loops, portable television cameras and portable transistorized monitors. This point of view may have been no less optimistic than the original hopes for educational broadcasting entertained by Schramm (1964), in its assumption that new technologies would in fact be made available on a more efficient basis than traditional broadcasting reception equipment. Moreover, as Mattelart's (1979) work suggests, such technology may be all the more likely to derive from western-based multinational companies, its design and its soft-ware carrying inbuilt and politically consequential assumptions as to what educational goals should be. In obliging teachers in the Third World to adjust their teaching curricula to the demand for such technology this process might simply accentuate the phenomenon of dependency.
THE QUESTION OF EFFECTS
The role of the mass media in the Third World has therefore received very considerable attention in recent years, both from the critical perspective of dependency theory and from that of developmentally-oriented action research. Yet it is still the case that very little is known about actual media effects in relation to dependency. On the one hand, some of the issues raised are too broad: media structures are related to other components of the international structure of dependency, yet insufficient attention is given to the impacts of specific contents. For instance, if ‘reactionary’ western media contents do have political impacts, it would seem, prima facie, that such impacts are curiously ineffective in diverting popular discontent, rebellion and revolution in many countries subjected to such contents. The impacts do not seem to rise above the structural conditions for social disintegration. It might even be hypothesized that exposure to western media fare tends to weaken respect for traditional authority, and is therefore dangerous to many different kinds of regime. On the other hand, other issues are raised that focus too specifically on narrowly defined categories of developmentally-related programming, which pay insufficient regard, for example, to the interaction of such programme impacts with the impacts of other programme categories. Overall, there is a shortage of imaginative hypothesis construction in both these two broad areas.
What research there has been on ‘media effects’ in terms of general media impacts on values, attitudes, and behaviours is strangely repetitive of some of the naively positivistic research, now less common perhaps in the west, in which inferences are drawn from, say, counts of violent incidents, the proportion of all feminine characters who appear in ‘subservient’ roles, etc. From the analysis of western soap opera is extracted the predictable list of negatively-evaluated concepts—greed, sexism, individualism, etc.—a game that can almost always be played two ways to yield an alternative list of virtues in which, for example, the ‘violence’ of ‘Starsky and Hutch’ becomes a mere backdrop to the celebration of comradeship and teamwork. Sophisticated semiological research is comparatively rare in Third-World contexts and even the value of Dorfman and Mattelart's (1975) vaunted analysis of Donald Duck must be assessed in relation to the highly purposeful propagandistic activity of Chilean media during the period of research. The orthodox view of audiences in the West is now one that stresses the social context in which communications are received, and which stresses the individual's capacity for active selection and selective retention. This view does not yet seem to have carried over sufficiently to ThirdWorld contexts in relation to general programming (cf. the review of Latin American research by Beltrans, 1978). Individual capacity for psychological compartmentalization and rationalization is underestimated to an extraordinary degree. Much more attention needs to be given to the processes by which individuals and groups interpret, translate and transform their experiences of foreign culture to relate to more familiar experiences. Perhaps the most useful working conclusion that can be drawn from this brief survey of inter-cultural media communications and the dependency process is that there is a great need for an emphasis on micro-analysis of media impacts at small group and individual levels to engage with and to illuminate the present emphasis on macro-analysis of media and multinational structures.
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