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196 Communication, Commerce and Power

TNCs. Through the medium of DBS, in conjunction with established
telecommunications links, and the use of sports, rock videos, sex,
violence and perhaps even on-line gambling to attract mass transna-
tional audiences to participate in the information economy, AI Gore's
dream of a Global Information Infrastructure appears set to come
true.

8.1 ASSESSING CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

Cultural imperialism is being exercised but not in the form postulated
by most cultural imperialism theorists. Rather than primarily a sys-
tematic expression of capitalism or an outcome of elite-based struc-
tures and orchestrations, its expression largely has been defined by
complex structures and mediations. In not recognizing this, Schiller,
for one, now has replaced the American state with transnational
capital as the core agent of this sub-set of imperialism. The institutio-
nalization of the free flow of information has, as Schiller believed it
would, entrenched the dominant position of mostly US-based cor-
porations in late-twentieth-century information economy develop-
ments. However, in not articulating the processes and structural
dynamics of this history, and in not explicitly recognizing the distinc-
tion between the American state as 'mediator' versus its role as an
imperialistic 'orchestrator' or 'functionary,' the precise nature of cul-
tural imperialism and its problematic and potentially contradictory
features cannot be directly addressed.
Based on the research presented in this book, the cultural imperi-
alism paradigm fails adequately to explicate intra-state and inter-
corporate conflicts. It does not clearly recognize the barriers and the
related historically based policy-making structural biases that shape
the day-to-day perspectives of public sector officials. Lastly, and
perhaps most importantly, it is limited in its ability to theorize change.
For example, on the Carter administration's formation of the IPDC,
Schiller assessed American motivations as follows:

[T]he US business system would secure world markets for its high-
tech products and services, bind more closely than ever into its
world-wide commercial system the balky nations of Africa, Asia,
and Latin America, and neatest of all, in an ideological sense,
convince the poor world that it was embarking on a course of
economic improvement and national autonomy. All these benefits