Global media/local meanings

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article the author argues that qualitative investigations into the consumption practices of local audiences provide an important counter to the pessimistic claims of the media imperialism theorists, limited as they are primarily to institutional and textual analysis. In particular, the author argues that qualitative studies of how local audiences interact with global media provide an important corrective to the assumption that cultural homogenisation and synchronisation (Schiller 1976; Hamelink 1993) is following in the wake of the spread of global (primarily American) media and that this is necessarily something to be deplored. This article first outlines some of the main tenets of the media imperialism thesis. Next it considers some of the more important critiques of this thesis. Finally, it draws on an interview the author conducted with a student at Rhodes University in order to clarify some of the important theoretical considerations we need to take into account when trying to assess the impact of global media on local audiences. Indeed after years of anti-apartheid sanctions … South African is a country awash in American consumer goods, colonised by American pop culture, and obsessed with American celebrities. (Bill Keller, New York Times, September 25, 1993:5) Choices [pertaining to media consumption] are constantly being made … But the questions of what those choices might mean, and how they work their way into the lives of those who make them, separating those lives from others perhaps just down the street, and linking them perhaps with others who share everything but locality; these questions remain. (Roger Silverstone 1990:186)