The Cultural Imperialism Debate

Does globalization spread one dominant culture at the expense of others? In 1969 Herbert Schiller argued that American media corporations were exporting values and consumerism, a view called cultural imperialism. In 1971 Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart's How to Read Donald Duck, written in Chile, claimed that Disney comics carried ideological messages. A 1980 UNESCO report, Many Voices, One World, called for a fairer flow of information between rich and poor countries.

Other scholars disagreed: John Tomlinson argued in 1991 that audiences are active, and studies of the American TV series Dallas found viewers in different countries interpreted it in very different ways. In 2005 UNESCO adopted a Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which allows states to support local culture. The debate turns on whether audiences absorb messages or reshape them.