Page 66 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Promise of Democracy

channels of mass communication, for purposes of creating favorable
social or political conditions of controlling the production of every-
day realities.This was particularly relevant in light of the East–West
conflict, when propaganda, commercial appeals, and cultural ad-
vances combined into a powerful and persuasive narrative.
The result has been a rebirth of the empire, this time determined
by superior media technologies and the realization among politi-
cians and business leaders that mass communication is the sine qua
non of any successful strategy of economic expansion and political
domination. It is an old idea, of course, that gains new significance
with the advances in communication technologies and the political
and economic status of the United States as a superpower with
physical and political access to much of the world.Thus, the success
of mass communication is guaranteed not only by a favorable polit-
ical climate, but also by the ample supply of a cultural narrative that
is rooted in advertising, journalism, and entertainment. In fact, the
United States has become the major supplier of information and
general broadcast programming at rates that are significantly lower
than original production costs, since foreign sales typically consti-
tute bonus revenues.
About 60 years since it began, the spread of American mass com-
munication has turned into a permanent process of reinforcing the
Americanization (or Westernization) of cultures, or of cultural lev-
eling that characterizes a move towards “globalization.”The step into
a global existence is a process that was identified earlier as cultural
imperialism, an ambiguous term but one with strong political appeal
for those opposed to the one-directional flow of cultural goods. A
cultural imperialism thesis, according to Jeremy Tunstall, condemns
the disappearance of authentic, traditional and local cultures in parts
of the world because of Western efforts of an indiscriminate, mass
dumping of commercial and media products.
This process, far from being new in the history of the world,
becomes problematic when the United States, in particular – and
Western nations generally – dominate the flow of cultural goods.
Its political undertones – called “Americanization” in the 1920s, cul-
tural imperialism in the 1960s, and globalization in the twenty-first
century – threaten the cultural autonomy of other nations and their
decisions regarding cultural exchanges. Although cultures thrive on

54