Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

86 MEDIA POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION
prediction of absolute domination, where resistance becomes coopted as
a ‘trendy’ part of finding pleasure in the consumption of lifestyle programmes?
Has Fukuyama been right all along? Have we passed the end
of the history of ideas – other than the idea of consumption? Is this the
last breath of grand ideals for the noble causes that publicly owned media,
at least in theory, claim to stand for? And how can this be explained
at the times where the fragmentation of audiences, conflicts of interests
and the gap of inequality are increasing? But, most importantly for the
purpose of this book, how have these changes shaped the field of media
policy?
If the struggle over the telecommunications regulatory reform is
largely defined by the realignment of resources and direct material access
to these resources, the infrastructure of telephony and computer
networks, and the resistance to oligopolies based upon claims for redistributive
justice, then broadcasting policies are characterized by an
overwhelming attachment to issues of symbolic significance. As we shall
see, the development of broadcasting policies reflects a struggle for a
‘place under the sun’ for cultures and languages whose cultural products
in the global markets do not share the same privileges of access and
distribution as for example those of the Western world or the ‘North’.
A relevant concept for the debates surrounding the regulatory reform
of broadcasting and the concept of cultural or media imperialism has
held a prominent presence, both in academic and policy circles, since
Nordenstreng and Varis’s report commissioned by UNESCO in 1974
(Chadha and Kavoori 2000), which eventually led to the MacBride Report
and NWICO. Arguments about cultural imperialism have experienced
a ‘life-after-death attraction’ (Kraidy 2005: 27) deployed today
by conservative nationalists and progressives alike, spanning the North–
South divide. In Europe and in Canada, claims about cultural imperialism
demonstrate renewed anxiety over the popularity of US content on television
and cinema screens today, as will be discussed at greater length below.
The effect of US cultural exports, especially in the form of television programming,
varies tremendously, based on the size of national audience
and regional and transnational trends in trade in television programming
(Iwabuchi 2002). Without abandoning a critique of the structural dominance
of both Northern states and TNCs to shape audiovisual policy,
recent critical research emphasizes the importance of local context and
televisual practices. These works on broadcasting practice in the post-
Fordist era draw our attention to ‘hybrid’ and ‘transcultural’ forms that
defy strict segregation of local ‘folk’ culture from commercial Western
cultural flows (Abu-Lughodh 2003; Rajagopal 2001).