Caught in the cross-fire: Tibet, media and promotional culture

Abstract

Anti-imperialist struggles within the Third World, from East Timor to Tibet, are compelled, due to relative powerlessness, to utilize western media in order to mobilize crucial world support. In the case of the Tibetan exile community, a media struggle with the Chinese government in Beijing is one of the few options open to it. But, western media culture has its own internal disputes, its own running conflicts about popular culture, as well as about the values and hegemonic structures within the media industry. In addition, these media are themselves embedded within a culture which is highly promotional - in terms of its dominant rhetorics and the ways its audiences negotiate reading positions. Despite much media sophistication on the part of the Tibetans, the promotion of Tibetan struggles against the Beijing government's aggression therefore also becomes entangled in a web of other promotional discourses, from commercial advertising to campaigns for overseas aid.