Is the NWICO debate obsolete?

INTRODUCTION

The debate over the role of information and communication in developing countries was never so intense before the Second World War. During the two decades which followed questions were raised on the imbalance pertaining to global news flow and later on, in other forms of media. During the 1970s, centre stage was given to the concerns about communication in ‘development’ of a nation. It would be crucial to note that this was a period of changing international political set-up and shifting of power. Many countries which were being decolonized and the prevailing ‘developing’ countries echoed similar demands regarding the bias existing in favour of the Western countries in terms of news, information and communication technology.

UNDERSTANDING THE NWICO DEBATE

“The domination endured by the poor of the world as a result of oppression by the powerful is a reality that degrades the whole of humankind as such. Hope for equality and justice is at the root of the struggle of every social group for the well-being of its members.”

(Lee, 1986: 82)

The above statement defines the concerns of the Third World countries which led to a calling for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) during the 1970s. It was mainly initiated by the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) who later raised it the General Assembly of the United Nations. During 1970s the domination of global media and information industry by a handful of transnational giants raised serious concerns about the injustice and imbalance prevailing in the processing of world information. Simply put, ‘The legal debate over the NWICO centers on the differences between the U.S. position that a free and unfettered flow of information is an established international legal principle, and the NWICO proponents' belief that a government balanced flow of information is permitted by international law’. (Wilson, 1986:108). There existed disparities between developed and developing countries, regional disparities, one-way flow, vertical flow, market dominance, distortion of content, cultural alienation, barriers to democratization, lack of critical awareness and lack of cooperation between nations when it came to communication and information sector. These problems were recognised and pointed out later in the MacBride Report titled Many Voices, One World (1980) published by UNESCO, which identified all these problems and the MacBride commission came up with recommendations.

The NWICO debate had three stages. The first stage (1973-1976) demanded ‘the establishment of a free and balanced flow of information and rejected any attempt at cultural colonialism’ (Lee, 1986: 82). This was when the term NWICO had not emerged and it was called NIIO (New International Information Order). The first phase of NWICO was criticized to be very ideology-driven (Bascur in Lee, 1982: 83). The second stage (1976-1979) of the debate was the most important one. It was during this phase when the theoretical paradigms of the first stage were researched upon and a connection between ideology and ‘reality’ in the world order was established, much to the displeasure of the developed countries. It was actually the third phase which gave a concrete shape to this debate with UNESCO publishing the MacBride Report in 1980. There were sixteen international experts in the MacBride commission which were ‘largely representative of the world’s political, economics and geographic spectrum- had been asked to study no less than “the totality of communication problems in modern societies”’ (Mowlana and Roach, 1992). MacBride report placed the communication at the centre of development process for any developing country. It stated that “development strategies should incorporate communication policies as an integral part in the diagnosis of needs and in design and implementation of selected priorities. In this respect communication should be considered a major development source, a vehicle to ensure real political participation in decision-making, a central information base for defining policy options, and an instrument for creating awareness of national priorities”

(Many Voices, One World, MacBride, 1980: 258)

The basic demands of the NWICO were the four Ds- Democratization, Decolonization, Demonopolization and Development.

‘1. News flows are castigated as “one-way flows”, and measures to ensure a more equitable balance of news flows between countries are demanded (Democratization).

2. The ’one-way flow’ and misrepresentations are interpreted to reflect a lack of respect for the countries’ cultural identities, a matter of great importance to the non-aligned countries (Decolonization).

3. The monopoly status of transnationalcorporations in terms of communications technology is perceived as a threat to national independence (Demonopolization).

4. The vital role of mass media in the development process is underlined, and the non-aligned countries join together to demand a more just distribution of communication resources in the world (Development).’ (Carlsson 2003: 12)

YES, THIS DEBATE IS OBSOLETE

With an unforeseen impact and growth of globalisation, some argue, the NWICO debate doesn’t hold much relevance now. The balance of power is becoming more and more evenhanded i.e. impartial due to emerging ‘free flow’ markets and availability of a wider variety of resources.

Dr. Ulla Carlsson, the director of The Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research (NORDICOM) wrote that when it came to the NWICO debate, there were ‘events and circumstances that led to the issue’s subsidence and subsequent removal from international agendas’ (Carlsson, 2003: 2). One of the reasons for the aforementioned is the breakdown of Soviet Union, the ‘traditional’ supporter of NWICO. Other reasons included the changing of the socio-economic landscape of the world. “..Political and academic debates over the idea of a NWICO have become rather quiescent in the past few years in light of the rapidly changing world political environment; international communication is likely to remain a highly visible global issue in the I99os. The scope and substance of discussions of this issue are expected to be shaped by two global trends now in the making: first, the widespread proliferation of new information/communication technologies, and second, the growing democratization of sociopolitical systems around the world in the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, a traditional long-time supporter of Third World calls for a NWICO.” (Aiysh, 1992: 488)

Another very important reason why this debate is sometimes rendered obsolete is because of the advent and conquest of internet over the world. The internet society or the ‘network society’ as conceived by Manuel Castells, a well-known communications scholar aptly describes the world we are living in. The internet has, according to proponents of the power of the World Wide Web; we are no longer bound by economic, social and political boundaries when it comes to communication and information being readily available to all. Internet is a medium which provides equal forums irrespective of the national backgrounds. In this age of internet, NWICO seems like it doesn’t fit, barring the areas where accessibility to internet is an issue but that is being ruled out more and more every day. Taking a very recent research example, Victor Pickard (2007), talked about NWICO, WSIS, internet governance, neo-liberalism, global communication, international communication and most recently, Internet policy. He describes NWICO as ‘a lost promise’ and that ‘NWICO gradually receded into relative obscurity following the pullout of its largest sponsors’ (Pickard, 2007: 122). The NWICO debate is often severely criticized by the West, especially in American newspapers and journals. Their argument advocating the ‘free-flow of information’ is a strong one. Their view is that the governments must not curb or regulate the information in their own countries, treating information as commodities and with neo-liberal institutions like WTO, information now is in the process to be traded freely. Whether or not this will lead to lead to adverse consequences is another matter but in a scenario like this where information is being treated as any other commodity in a ‘free market’, NWICO doesn’t hold much promise, in fact, in such cases it does not hold any relevance.

NO, THIS DEBATE IS NOT OBSOLETE

Despite the glorification and celebration of globalisation, we need to look at the criticism against neo-liberal policies around the world because the communication sector also has been engulfed in the neo-liberal policy debate. Increasing inequalities, profit-maximizing nature and imperialistic undertones are the burning issues which still haunt the communication policy making. One of the scholars whose work was on the WSIS writes that ‘the old controversy about the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) seems to be experiencing a resurrection in our times, on the occasion of WSIS. The controversy then lasted about ten years, from 1975 to 1985 and escalated into the withdrawal of the USA from the UNESCO. They have only returned as of fall 2003’ (Kuhlen, 2003: 1)

One important concern of the NWICO was the standard of reporting of journalists worldwide in case of news. This is an argument which is valid even today. With the nations claiming to have greater press freedom, technology and skilled journalists, the bias seems to be more than ever before, which is ironical but not so hard to understand given the international and national political dynamics. There was a UNESCO sponsored study called ‘Foreign Images Study, a cross-national comparative news analysis sponsored by UNESCO and the IAMCR and organized by Jim Halloran. The study monitored the foreign news coverage of selected media (including news agencies) of 29 countries during one or two sample weeks in 1979. Like the findings of other studies, the results of this project justified several, though not all, of the critical arguments of the NWICO debate’ (Schulz, 2001: 5)

In order to understand today’s communication problems, it is very important to view them ‘in a historical perspective to understand the roots of the current debate and how they relate to changes that are affecting the world today.’ (Padovani, 2005:1). In a research article of 2006 published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it was said that ‘civil society actors are calling for the use of multiple mechanisms for financing and a reduction in sole reliance on market mechanisms, echoing the recommendations of the MacBride Report.’ (Mansell and Nordenstreng, 2007: 14). This is an indicator that major elements of the NWICO debate are still very much valid.

‘Recent non-aligned meetings such as the eighth summit conference , held in Harare in 1986, and the Ninth meeting of the Intergovernmental Council for the Coordination of Information  (IGC), also held in Harare in June 1987, continue to provide unqualified support for NWICO’ ((Roach, 1990: 290) and hence never let it go out of steam. These summits and conferences extended the NWICO theme to the World Summit on Information Society in 2003 and the term NWICO is still referred to, in the reports and recommendations of these summits. “Despite the fact that they were writing in the late 1970s, the authors of the MacBride Report envisaged a network akin to the globally distributed internet that has emerged.” (Mansell and Nordenstreng, 2007: 20) This shows that the NWICO, though based in 1970s had envisaged a future with global governance and network. Pickard (2007) analyses that ‘by historicizing WSIS in its relation to NWICO, theorizing related debates in the context of neo-liberalism, and textually analyzing key policy documents, this analysis (that of NWICO and WSIS) brings into sharper focus the foundational assumptions of today’s global communications system’. It is very clear that to understand today’s problems pertaining to international communication and information flow, we have to go back to NWICO, and so it is certainly not obsolete.

CONCLUSION- THE FUTURE OF NWICO DEBATE

Having analysed the arguments of both the sides, the relevance of NWICO still cannot be ruled out as it is brought up in every communication policy debate.

“The political and economic context clearly has changed since the NWICO debate, but many of the political and economic issues are the same.” (Mansell and Nordenstreng, 2007: 26)

Although a direct comparison between NWICO and World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) is limited by the latter’s focus on the Internet, ‘significant technological developments clearly have exacerbated concerns first addressed at NWICO. Also noteworthy are issues no longer on the table during these discussions. These omissions reflect larger political economic structural changes that have filtered down through the policy discourse. For example, according to the WSIS vision, access is a wholly good thing without qualifying whether for individuals or corporations. Furthermore, little discussion centers on transborder data flow despite the fact that 90% of the Internet belongs to proprietary networks, not the “open” Internet. These networks require special security and firewalls and generate an enormous international flow of data. Yet it has become an unquestioned assumption that this flow should be left unregulated.’ (Pickard, 2007: 134). WSIS also raised parallel concerns with the NWICO even though they had a time difference of around 35 years between them. This strongly indicates that although the NWICO debate is not as strongly valid as it was when it was established, the international communication policy debates are still haunted by the ghost of NWICO, i.e., their basic elements are the same. Therefore, this debate certainly cannot be described as ‘obsolete’ or irrelevant yet. It remains to be seen whether it ever will be. To sum up the entire argument, ‘with the rapid developments in communications technologies and the resulting expansion of Western satellite and cable television in the developing world, key issues in the 1970s debates about the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) may again be relevant’ (Thussu, 2000: 323)

REFERENCES on request

How and why is the argument of cultural imperialism unanswerable?

1.    INTRODUCTION

Cultural imperialism is a term which has been around now for approximately four decades now. It has been debated upon by some of the most well known scholars like Arjun Appadurai, Oliver Boyd-Barrett Herbert Irving Schiller, John Tomlinson, Chin Chuan Lee, Jeremy Tunstall and many more. At the heart of their discussions has always been the concern to establish this concept and define it within the periphery of various disciplines. The discourse of cultural imperialism is one with great complexities with no satisfactory answers. There are as many theories about cultural imperialism as there are people studying it. The idea of ‘hegemony’ which was conceived by Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) also took on a disguise of ‘cultural hegemony’ for scholars of culture studies. All these developments indicate that ‘cultural domination’ indeed, in its many forms, was a fascinating field of study. On empirical grounds, many theories were formulated which were largely taken as ‘axiomatic’ rather than ‘empirical’ and that is exactly what is going to be discussed in this essay. These theories were not tested, could not be applied even to specific geographical societies without considerable amount of debate but were still highly ‘believable in their nature’. India was colonised by the British Empire for 200 years and scholars of culture studies in India claim that a ‘legacy of colonialism’ still dominates the present day culture in the country. Although culture includes other aspects than media and its audiences but due to the limited scope of this essay, we shall apply the theory of cultural imperialism to the media audiences in India, test it from an ‘audience’ point of view and see whether or not we are able to find any ‘answers’ for the concept of cultural imperialism.

        2. THE CONCEPT OF CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

The theory of cultural imperialism is not very well defined by scholars but the closest definition to ‘believed precision’ was given by Herbert Irving Schiller. He defined it as ‘the sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced and sometimes even bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system’ (Schiller, 1976, p. 9).

There were many terms which further emerged from this term namely ‘media imperialism’, ‘cultural domination’, ‘electronic colonialism’ but more or less, all these terms were fundamentally describing cultural imperialism. John Tomlinson who in his seminal work ‘Cultural imperialism: a critical introduction’ talks about four ways to talk about cultural imperialism as a concept, says that ‘imperialism’ “grasps a specific form of domination, that associated with ‘empire’” (Tomlinson, 1991, p. 19). With such a strong word such as ‘imperialism’ being used in the context, let us look at the four perspectives mentioned above. The first one is where he talks about ‘cultural imperialism as Media Imperialism’. He asserts that although ‘media is very different from other parts of culture, but it is a part of people’s ‘lived experience’ (Tomlinson, 1991: 21) of television, newspaper, radio and cinema which act as ‘agents of cultural imperialism’. The second is the ‘cultural imperialism as a discourse of nationality’. The original concern of coming up with the theory of cultural imperialism can safely be assumed to be the threat of cultural ‘invasion’ or attack on the ‘indigenous’ culture of any nation. Although Tomlinson argues that he has his doubts about the meaning of ‘indigenous culture’ but the apprehensions of an attack leads to a study of the aspects of culture and its transitions. Thirdly, he describes cultural imperialism as ‘a critique of global capitalism’ in two ways. First being the observation that capitalism by the virtue of its nature is ‘homogenising’; the perception being that ‘everywhere in the world it is beginning to look and feel the same’. Secondly, he says that global capitalism is being criticized as spreading a ‘consumerist culture’, especially in the developing countries, assuming the unfiltered bombardment of capitalist cultural products. The fourth standpoint is the one in which Tomlinson describes the ‘cultural imperialism as a critique of modernity’. This is a rather complex and multilevel discourse to understand. It is a kind of a general description of how ‘modernity’ entails cultural imperialism by virtue of it being linked to influence of capitalism, ‘development’ and the idea of the world existing as a whole rather than just nation-states; encompassing the thought all the aspects of the ‘modern world’ extend to the whole ‘global civil society’. Now we look at the reasons as to why this concept has never received any satisfying definition applicable to any part of the world, especially India.

3.   HOW AND WHY IS CULTURAL IMPERIALISM UNANSWERABLE? – THE INDIAN AUDIENCE

The audience in India is one of the largest in the world for any country and its cultural diversity makes for an interesting case for media-audience studies. It has the world’s second largest population and seventy percent of it lives in rural areas. A case study like this proves to be an intriguing ground to test the theory of cultural imperialism. Following are the reasons why and how the concept of cultural imperialism is unanswerable when applied to Indian media-audiences.

     3.1 Cultural imperialism is ill-defined and hard to measure

The foremost problem with the concept of cultural imperliasm has been that it has never been defined clearly so as to encompass any class of audience categorised according to any specification. Annabelle Sreberny in her article ‘The Many Cultural Faces of Imperialism’ argues that cultural-imperialism ‘became one of the staple catchphrases of the field of international communication. Yet, from the beginning, the concept was broad and ill-defined, operating as evocative metaphor rather than precise construct and has gradually lost much of its critical bite and historic validity’ (Sreberny, 1997: 49).  Moreover, treating this theory as ‘axiomatic’ and ‘solid’ more terms and concepts which have shaky foundations have emerged consequently. Terms such as ‘electronic-colonialism’, ‘media-imperialism’ lack clarity and cannot elucidate the theory in terms of media audiences. The assumption of these models ‘is that the media are so powerful that they can directly inject their ideas into the audience’s heads’ (McQuail, 1987 cited in Ruddock, 2001: 40). Gauntlett describes this phenomena in his literary piece ‘ten things wrong with the effects model’ in which one of the most relevant one to the Indian case would be the argument that the ‘effects model assumes superiority to the masses. Whilst a certain population of the public feels that the media may cause other people to engage in anti-social behaviour, almost no-one ever says that they have been affected in that way themselves…they ‘know’ that the effects will only be on the ‘other people’ and insofar others are defined as children or ‘unstable’ individuals. Who are these others? The uneducated? The working class?...this reveals the kind of elitism and snobbishness which often seem to underpin such research.’ (Dickinson et al, 1998: 126). To say that cultural imperialism is hard to measure would be an under-statement.

3.2 Ignorance of audiences’ perspective

It might sound ironic but most of the studies done on cultural imperialism do not entail the study of audience. It is very crucial to research on the audiences as this concept is audience-oriented. This lack of perspective and basic foundation renders the whole study of culture and imperialism baseless but it is not possible to incorporate a ‘large audience’ in the formulation and testing of this theory because it would become too complex.  So, the validation of cultural imperialism if often taken for granted. Although there are many theories in audiences research such as the ‘uses and gratification model’ (Katz, Blumler, Gurevitch), the ‘encoding-decoding model’ (Stuart Hall), ‘effects model’ , Tactical resistance (Michel de Certeau) and each of them can be a lens through which the landscape of ‘cultural imperialism’ might look entirely new, but due to the limited scope of this essay, we shall look at the broader complexities involving some of these in understanding the concept of cultural imperialism in India. The theory of cultural imperialism is accused of having a ‘positivist bias’ of communication which has consistently taken a wrong approach to the mass-media (Gauntlett, 1998 cited in Ruddock, 2001: 38). Gauntlett goes on to explain that the media-audience scholars often regard the audiences in the ‘same way as a physicist might regard iron filings lying on a piece of paper waiting to be ionized by a magnet: playthings to be manipulated. Here again, we can see echoes of positivism, where the scientist regards him or herself as a dispassionate observer…this arrogance means that researchers can miss a good deal of the audiences’ experience’ (Gauntlett, 2001: 39). Lewis (1991) argues that ‘experiments are flawed because they assume that the world is driven by distinct forces that can be identified, separated and examined in isolation from one another. They also assume that people can be cleansed of their social backgrounds so that the effects that media have upon them can be clearly identified’ (cited in Ruddock, 2001: 39) which is not applicable in a country like India where the tradition and ideological backgrounds are still strongly attached to their everyday life and therefore, their culture.

         3.3 Classification of the audience?

As explained above, Indian audience is a hugely diversified audience in terms of culture. So, if at all there is any strong cultural influence on them, it is very difficult to assess the impact of it on the spectators. The perception of cultural domination cannot be studied without categorising audiences because it is improbable to assess the brunt of any ‘outside’ cultural pressure on a class-less audience. Now, the problem arises when we begin to classify the audience. Ruddock argues that ‘quantitative research methods are ill equipped to account for some of the ways in which audiences relate to media fare’ (Ruddock, 2001: 41). There are a few parameters like age, gender, income, lifestyle apart from long term or short term effects on audiences but more often than not, two or more of these parameters co-incide and make it extremely difficult to establish any fact with conviction.

           3.4 Problem of a specific time frame

India, in the current times, is in a phase of transition from a traditional to a more consumerist, capitalist society in terms of economy. Taking a typically neo-Marxist approach, it may be argued that this would mean that the consumption of media might also be affected by this trend towards a ‘modern’ lifestyle. Even then, majority of the population living in rural areas might have a different choice of media viewership, in fact, they do (we shall discuss it later in 3.5.1). Toffler (1980) and Naisbitt (1982) ‘have drawn on the understandable concern of individuals caught in the process of change…numerous scholarly studies have attempted to assess the impacts of individual trends but the collection if prophecies and assessments is inchoate, unwieldy, and full of contradictions’ (cited in Neuman, 1991: 5). The Western culture-industries are still not able to penetrate and conquer this audience torn between tradition and western influences due to this period of economic and social transition.

     

           3.5 Contra-flow from India

There are cases of immense resistance and ‘contra-flow’ (Thussu, 2010) to the Western media influence in India. We shall consider the main two.

          3.5.1 Vernacular news media against English newspapers and Western News Media

India has the largest number of vernacular languages- 18 being recognised by the constitution. Here is an excerpt from an Indian research aptly titled ‘Cultural imperialism or vernacular modernity?’-

“An overview of the literature on Indian news media shows that the English language media, which dominated national media market from independence till the late 1990s, is no longer the dominant market player (Jeffrey, 1993, 2000; Ninan, 2007; Rajagopal, 2001; Stahlberg, 2002). The booming Hindi news media industry testifies to the fact that vernacular media pose a serious challenge to the dominance and authority of English-language media in the public sphere. As many as 23 Hindi news channels have been launched since 2000. At the same time, according to the 2006 National Readership Survey (NRS), there is not a single English-language newspaper in the top ten in terms of readership.”(Neyazi, 2010: 909) He asserts that localisation became such an important factor in India that after the communications revolution in the country, these vernacular language-newspapers expanded their readerships manifold. It has become a serious challenge for English newspapers to penetrate the Indian media industry as the ‘discursive domain emanating from Hindi and vernacular language newspapers helps in formulating and shaping public opinion and acts as an important channel for the public to raise their grievances and hold the state more responsible’ (Neyazi, 2010: 912)

           3.5.2 The Curious Case of Bollywood

The second one is the case of Bollywood (Hindi film industry) in India, which refutes many classical Western theories of media audiences including cultural imperialism. In fact, Bollywood is an example of a contra-flow to the Western cultural influence and enjoys a huge foreign and diaspora audience. An interesting example here would be that of a Brazilian soap opera titled- India: a Love Story which is a telenovela ranking amongst the most viewed on Brazilian television. Comprising of Brazilian actors and originally in Portuguese, it is very Indian in terms of its content and the treatment of its screenplay. Back in the country, even ‘after the novelty of foreign channels wore off in the early 1990s, Indian channels consolidated their position, recorded the highest audience ratings and forced foreign channels to adopt local programming in a big way’ (Sonwalkar, 2001: 1)

The argument here is very simple, due to a contra flow of Indian media and cultural products, the concept of cultural imperialism seems shaky here because it would be an oxymoronic statement to say that a country facing cultural imperialism is the one exerting its ‘soft power’ on parts of the world and hence it is still not clear whether India is a victim of cultural imperialism or not.

4.   Ties to Neo-liberalism

Cultural imperialism can evidently be described to have ties with neo-Liberalism by virtue of being ‘imperialistic’. Capitalist or neo-liberal societies have a tendency to gain foothold and spread very fast through society to create its own authority because of its nature. This ‘authority’ or the ‘centre of governance’ then dictates terms for the ‘market space’. A similar argument can be put forth in case of culture industries and ‘cultural centers’ of the world in terms of production. This nature of cultural imperialism has been claimed to increase the inequalities among audiences as it ‘has created a new “information underclass” that cannot afford the high costs of information and new media: the computer based equipment needed to access it and the training necessary to operate the complex equipment’ and has instead ‘created a new powerful class of executives and technicians who control and have expertise in the utilization of the information technologies and the evolving network’ (Neuman, 1991: 6). A consumerist lifestyle entailing ideas of freedom, love, and democracy are the themes openly and proudly propagated by the Western media industries as a result of which neo-liberal claws have begun to dig into the cultural sphere too- an idea of consumerist ideology as perceived by Herman and McChesney (1997). How much is the audience affected by it at a personal level, remains to be verified. So, again, the audience perspective is not taken into account which renders the theory devoid of any evidence and therefore, unanswerable.

         5. Ties to development studies

The modernisation critique by John Tomlinson is closely linked to development studies. The modernisation theory in development, when extrapolated to media audience studies could be contextualised as ‘cultural imperialism as a path towards development’. There are conflicting theories when modernisation is linked with cultural imperialism. In the urban/metropolitan parts of India, the so-called cultural influence from outside has given the audiences new identities, meaning, they identify themselves not with the rural fellow Indians but start recognising themselves as a part of a ‘global civil societal construct’ (Keane, 2003) consuming the same media products across the globe. If such audiences increase in number considerably, it would be fascinating to observe the serious implications it would have on the cultural richness within India; whether or not India (or a part thereof) would become the ‘victim’ of cultural imperialism. But here we need to understand the differences between ‘media-related “behaviours” and “cultural practices”’ (Ruddock, 2001: 37). Again, I would argue, the long term effects might be different from the short term ones; there could be different implications for different kinds of audiences, an issue of classification which we have already dealt with above.

 

After analyzing all these arguments, I would argue that all the aforementioned reasons are subject to continual and simultaneous study of media audience in India as culture is a dynamic entity and the effects of outside culture on Indian media audience today could very well be refuted tomorrow. The theory of cultural imperialism still hangs in the air, waiting for a stronghold- that of verification of the effects on audiences. As Tomlinson wrote, ‘we must continually exercise judgment as to when a ‘real’ theoretical issue is likely to turn into a ‘brain-teaser’ (Tomlinson, 1991: 20).

6.   CONCLUSION

Having established that existence of cultural imperialism is indeed an impossible question to answer, at least till now, we should keep in mind the fresh audience research on a scale larger than ever before by multinational corporations for their own benefit and we can hope to use it to strengthen media audiences research on the multifarious, complex and controversial theory of cultural-imperialism.

We must keep in mind that the methodology entailing the study of cultural imperialism should be ‘different from the effects model even at the most obvious level, it should be about ‘influences’ and ‘perceptions’, rather than ‘effects’ and ‘behaviour’. However, whilst such studies may provide valuable reflections on the relationship between mass-media and audiences, they cannot- for the same reason- directly challenge claims made from within the ‘effects model’ paradigm’ (Dickinson et al, 1998: 128). As for the future of this theory, the ‘grandeur of its conception’ and the ‘conception of its grandeur’ will always be celebrated in the cultural studies but it remains to be seen whether there would be sufficient audience studies so as to validate or refute the theory of cultural imperialism.

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REFERENCES on request