The expectation must be that, as in the Chilean case analyzed by Mattelart, the existing controllers of the media will resist the attempts to change the bias of communication in favor of the poor. What follows from that, however, is the opposite of the conclusion that the media imperialism paradigm wished to draw. If it is only in great social crises that the chances exist for changing communication, and if in those moments it is almost certain that the state and the media owners will resist such a change, then it is a mistake to ally with exactly these people in the struggle against 'imperialism', whether cultural or military or economic.
Imperialism is, as we have seen, a real and central force in contemporary politics, and it is certain that human liberation cannot be achieved without overcoming it. The allies of the poor and the powerless in the developing world are not, however, the people who run the media in their own countries. However much the latter may resent their subordination to the rulers of the developed world, they fear and will oppose their own poor even more. Of course, the poor of the developing world need allies...But those allies are more likely to be found amongst the poor and the powerless of the developed world than amongst the rich and the powerful of their countries or of the richer countries themselves...
The participatory paradigm...begins...from the perception that it is only when the poor and the oppressed find their own voices that they will have the power and the confidence to resolve their own problems. The starting point for any better understanding of the way ahead is this fundamental insight. The task is not to replace it but to develop its logical implications.
That logic begins from the "bottom" and works up, rather than the other way around, but a stress on the popular is not enough to resolve each and every question that presents itself.
Colin Sparks, Globalization, Development, and the Mass Media, pp. 224-225
So I'm finishing this book today, reading it for comps and spending way too much time on it. But, besides remembering that single-authored books can be read much quicker than what I've doing with this one, the final chapters have paid off substantially. I'll assign this book in classes that I teach.
More importantly, though, this chapter, and this passage in particular, makes me think of the current presidential election. It also makes me think of all the things I want to be involved in changing if, by chance, we move back to Oklahoma at the end of the year. More on these points in a bit.
In this book, Sparks traces the evolution of development communication and suggests directions for its future. Here's a brief primer on the history of mass communication research: it started after WWI, when the U.S. government thought propaganda had been so successful, that they could develop, in conjunction with top scholars, the perfect message, that silver bullet (hence the name, the silver bullet theory), that when disseminated to the public, people would just buy it.
Say what you will about the public, this idea, the "powerful effects" school, has long since been debunked. Mass comm research, although predominantly still in the effects paradigm, accepted decades ago that people's understandings and interpretations of mass media messages are much more complex than what those early adminstrative researchers wanted to do.
As Sparks points out, though, development communication had a particular goal: the betterment of society. Moreover, as development communication came to the fore during the Cold War, it was used, again by the U.S. government and scholars, to try and keep the developing world from going "communist." All sorts of "modernization" projects were designed to reach the developing world and, in short, try and get them to buy into a "modern," i.e., Western, way of life. Rural areas were particular targets in this research.
This project was a complete failure. Peoples in developing worlds just did not adopt "Western" ideals and methods. At first, those at the front of development projects, Westerners, of course, blamed the people themselves. They were backward, too traditional- they weren't cosmopolitan enough, or so said these diplomats, scholars, government officials, and other various "experts" on the situation.
What scholars from developing countries began pointing out, however, was that Western experts often made no effort to understand the things they were trying to change within the context of the location they were trying to change it. Most importantly, these Western scholars and experts did not take into account existing power structures and power relations that might make the non-elites in these developing countries hesitant to accept change from anyone not from their own community. In other words- and this can't be stressed enough- it was NOT the stupidity or shortcomings, or the traditions of the poor that kept them from changing their ways. It was their implication in a system that had long exploited them- had contributed to their poverty, stolen, raped, and oppressed them- it was their distrust of Western experts who were connected to the persistent hierarchies in their own countries, established under colonial rule.
This was the beginning of the cultural imperialism phase of development communication. As Sparks points out, though, like it's predecessors in the participatory communication phase, both lost track of the notion that change must be bottom-up. For the theorists in the participatory camp, they argued that change must come from the people- but forgot to take into account the structural inequities, and therefore failed. The cultural imperialists made strides towards change, going so far as to getting UNESCO to start talks on a New World Information and Communication Order. Unfortunately, as Sparks points out, cultural imperialism scholars, besides a failure to clearly operationalize their terms, focused too much on state relations, and ended up enabling some of the most authoritarian regimes in their quest for developing world empowerment.
So Sparks concludes that in order to actually enact radical change, one that truly confronts and overthrows the huge disparities and oppression resulting from neoliberal policies and a new age of empire, the one which makes it so the majority of the world's population tries to make a living on less than $2 a day, radical activists and scholars must combine elements of the participatory paradigm, with the understanding of world power structures as first theorized by the cultural/media imperialists, to utilize the media for radical change. Radical change, meaning a total overhaul of the existing power structures and inequities that result- revolution, in a sense. More specifically, Sparks calls for media, from the bottom, disseminating messages of inequity gathered from the bottom, targeting a global audience, while starting local. It must be, unlike the problems of earlier forms of development communication, "of the most thoroughgoing democratic kind" (p. 225). It is not, significantly, prone to market-driven values.
Okay, so why did this make me think of the current presidential election? Simply because of my increasing irritation with the candidates' persistence in talking about "free trade." To say you stand for change, and they both do, and then say you support the principles of free trade is a direct contradiction. It is the principles of free trade, of neoliberalism, that have resulted in the problems we face in the world. It is free trade that enables the U.S. imperial inclinations, under the guise of spreading democracy, which is further articulated to a consumerist lifestyle. In short, the U.S. wants to spread democracy, which any more only means, free trade and consumerism. My ability to buy whatever I want is not freedom, but the capitalist ambitions of the U.S., and the transnational corporations with which it does business, is deeply tied to selling democracy as the freedom to consume. The problem is, our "freedom to consume" is slavery. It is not freedom at all, but a mythical belief that we achieve happiness through the acquisition of goods. And those goods, overwhelmingly, are U.S. goods. Not only this, but the standards set of what is good enough, of the things we "must have," are purposely and intentionally in flux, so that we always need more. The goal posts are constantly moved- we can never reach self-actuation. We can never have enough if enough is always something more.
Literally speaking, however, the principles of free trade that the candidates so adamantly support have directly led to the impoverishment of billions of people around the world. It is not empowering at all- the developing countries who accept loans from the IMF or the World Bank are then expected to adhere to structural change. What this means is, they are expected to privatize what may have been national or locally owned industries, extracting the resources that once supported the people and redirecting that support out of the country. It means that workers around the world, due to the increasing privatization of industry, are prone to more exploitative working conditions; one of the things countries must agree to when accepting money from the IMF is, basically, to dismantle their workers' legal abilities to unionize and therefore to get a fair wage and to protect themselves from labor abuses.
This is neoliberalism- this is free trade. It is unquestioned by our candidates, and by the media. As Sparks, and numerous, numerous other media scholars, have noted, the media are implicated in this process; they are of the elite; we should expect nothing else from them.
So here's to a movement from the bottom-up. Lord knows, if I move back to Oklahoma- which would be fine, really- we'll need it to counter the Jim Inhoffes, Tom Coburns, and Sally Kearns of the state.
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