CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

The importance of media has grown in an exponential way in the last decades. It has gone side by side with the well being of the developed countries and with the scale production of electronic devices and their relatively low costs. The massive distribution of electronic equipment in almost every house in the western countries created an opportunity for goods producers as well as for politicians to widely broadcast their messages able to reach a huge percentage of the population. In parallel, a high number of commercial companies have appeared and different communication techniques have been developed to reach all the segments of the different societies.

 

Naturally, most of these broadcasts were also able to reach all angles of the globe due to the development of sophisticated means of transmission such as satellite communications assets and a worldwide distributed computer network (internet) initially utilized only by military organizations and converted for civilian use when the cost of terminals has become affordable. Consequently, ideological, political and commercial messages could be sent to any country, specially to those which were under dictatorship and ideological constrains and with media controlled by the local leaders. In most cases it was enough to have a dish and a decoder or a personal computer to have access to a wide spectrum of information.

 

The increased importance of media broadcasts has also heavily influenced the culture of any country. The “export” of  all kind of messages (ideological, political and commercial) has mainly been from the west to the east, from developed countries to the underdeveloped ones. This unbalanced process has created different kind of processes. In one hand many people have been moving on the opposite direction of the media. In fact, messages of well being have attracted people to move to the west looking for a better life. In the other hand, countries have been influenced either culturally commercially and politically. American movies and world broadcasters have created an immense market exporting the American dream and products worldwide. A clear example of it is the distribution to almost all over the world of American products, ideas and language, even in those countries that do not enjoy the same political views.

 

In the last years there have been many attempts to counter this western (American) hegemony also within European countries.  There have been countries which have been fighting the “Americanization” of their national languages and / or have been trying to implement technical solutions to control the flux of information through internet whenever they are considered harmful to the country interests. It is in this framework that Arabic countries have established, beside others, television networks capable to broadcast also in English worldwide.

 

I conclusion, this western (American) hegemony in one side has improved our ways of living on the other side it represents a risk for those countries that do not have enough means to counter this  cultural imperialism. The messages arriving from the west showing the good sides of the developed countries have started an irreversible trend of attracting desperate people from poor countries looking for a better life. This large and often uncontrolled movement of people is also becoming a cultural trend in which culture, food and different lifestyles are becoming popular in any developed countries.