Mass Media and Imperialism

M Mass Media and Imperialism Tanner Mirrlees Communication and Digital Media Studies, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, ON, Canada Keywords US Empire and communications · Imperialism and the mass media · Cultural imperialism · Media imperialism · Media and cultural industries · Media globalization · International communication · Cultural diffusion · Cultural hegemony · Soft power · Public diplomacy · Popular geopolitics Description From World War II to the present day, the USA has been the world’s dominant media and cultural superpower. The study of US Empire, cultural and media imperialism, and the cultural industries is important to critical political economists of communication, media studies scholars, and US foreign policy researchers. This entry is a holistic conceptualization of the US Empire and the cultural industries. The first section conceptualizes the “media” dimension of US Empire and cultural imperialism. The second section highlights the global economic dominance of the US cultural industries and the role played by the US State in supporting this dominance. The third section focuses on the global geopolitics of the US cultural industries and their support for US “soft power” or public diplomacy campaigns that attempt to build transnational consent to dominant ideas about America and US foreign policy. The fourth section conceptualizes “the media products” of US Empire. The concluding section identifies some of the consequences the US cultural industries, US State public diplomacy campaigns, and media products may have within non-US countries. Introduction In a Life magazine article entitled “The American Century,” the media magnate Henry Luce (1941) predicted that the United States would achieve world hegemony, and he urged his fellow Americans to “accept wholeheartedly” their “duty” and “opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence.” Luce enthused at how “American jazz, Hollywood movies, American slang, American machines and patented products are in fact the only things that every community in the world, from Zanzibar to Hamburg, recognizes in common.” The source of these “things” was the media and cultural industries or American news companies, publishers, radio and TV broadcasters, film studios, and advertisers. Throughout the Cold War, the US cultural industries grew, internally, by developing © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 I. Ness, Z. Cope (eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_122-1 2 new sub-sectors and, externally, by expanding their operations throughout Western Europe and across the newly independent postcolonial countries. As the cultural industries traveled the globe in search of new investments to make, new crossborder production, distribution and exhibition subsidiaries to acquire, new sources of advertising revenue to extract, new consumer markets to sell to, and new audiences to commodify, they carried ideas and images of the American liberal consumer-capitalist way of life to the world. After the Cold War, the US cultural industries expanded into the Soviet Union’s former sphere of influence and across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. At the turn of the millennium, CNN, Walt Disney, and Britney Spears seemed to encompass the entire planet: US media products were ubiquitous. Nearly eight decades have passed since Luce spoke of America as the most powerful and vital nation in the world, and nowadays, the media products of the US cultural industries are common referents for billions of people. In 2017, the Walt Disney-owned blockbuster Star Wars: The Last Jedi was the highest worldwide grossing film: it took $712,358,507 from the global box office and ranked among the top ten highest-grossing films in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. In that same year, Super Bowl LI drew a global TV audience of over 111 million viewers to a competition between the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots for the Vince Lombardi Trophy. US-based TV corporations owned the world’s five most popular TV shows (by ratings and social media buzz): The Walking Dead (AMC), Game of Thrones (HBO), The Flash (Warner Bros.), Pretty Little Liars (Warner Bros.), and The Big Bang Theory (Warner Bros.). In 2017, US interactive entertainment companies created most of the world’s best-selling video games: Activision (Call of Duty Black Ops III and Call of Duty WWII), Electronic Arts (FIFA 2019 and Madden NFL 19), and Take-Two Interactive (NBA 2K19 and Grand Theft Auto V). Currently, billions of people around the world access the Internet with technologies owned by Apple and Microsoft, shop at Amazon.com, send and receive email messages using Gmail and Outlook, virtually socialize with friends on Facebook, Mass Media and Imperialism tweet personal opinions on Twitter, search for news and entertainment on Google and Yahoo, post photos to Instagram and Pinterest, let Netflix and YouTube algorithmically customize their media diet, and discuss topics on Reddit. Throughout the twentieth century, the US drove and utilized developments in the media and cultural industries to build, project, and maintain its economic, geopolitical, and cultural power. In the twenty-first century, the United States is the world’s dominant media and cultural superpower, the leading cultural-media imperialist. The study of US Empire, cultural and media imperialism, and the cultural industries is important to critical political economists of communication, media studies scholars, and US foreign policy researchers. The “field of study” of “media imperialism” crisscrosses many disciplines and fields and flags a plurality of approaches (Boyd-Barrett 2015, 2), but “imperialism in general and media imperialism in particular occupy intellectually a vital place in international media studies” (Nordenstreng 2013, 354). In the twenty-first century, theorizations and concrete studies of the nexus of Empire, imperialism, and the media and cultural industries are important because they address the “unequal relations of power” between the global system’s dominant imperialist countries and others (BoydBarrett 2015, 6). Research in this area take it as axiomatic that all Empires, in territorial or nonterritorial forms, rely upon communications technologies and cultural industries to expand and shore up their economic, geopolitical, and cultural influence. This entry is a holistic conceptualization of the significance of the cultural industries to the US Empire and imperialism. The first section conceptualizes the “media” dimension of US Empire and cultural imperialism. The second section highlights the global economic dominance of the US cultural industries and the role played by the US State in supporting this dominance. The third section focuses on the global geopolitics of the US cultural industries, and their support for US “soft power” or public diplomacy campaigns that attempt to build transnational consent to dominant ideas about America and US foreign policy. The Mass Media and Imperialism fourth section conceptualizes “the media products” of US Empire. The concluding section identifies some of the consequences of the US cultural industries, US State public diplomacy campaigns, and media products may have within non-US countries. This entry’s holistic overview of the significance of the cultural industries and media products to the US Empire and imperialism builds upon and draws upon the past five decades of cultural and political economy of communications research and writing on the topic (Bah 2008; Beltrán 1979; Boyd-Barret 1977, 1998, 2015; Boyd-Barret and Mirrlees 2019; Comor 1994, 1997; Dorfmann and Mattelart 1971; Fuchs 2010; Golding and Harris 1997; Harvey 2005; Herman and McChesney 1997; Fuchs 2010; Golding and Harris 1997; Herman and Chomsky 1988; Hills 2002, 2007; Innis 1950, 2007; Jin 2005, 2007, 2008, 2015; Mattelart 1976, 1979; McChesney 2006, 2008, 2014; Miller et al. 2005; Mirrlees 2006, 2009, 2013, 2014, 2016a, b, 2018; Mosco 1996; Murdock 2006; Nordenstreng and Varis 1974; Nye 2008; Simpson 1994; Tomlinson 1991; Tunstall 1977; Rothkop 1997; Schiller 1969, 1976, 1991, 2000; Sparks 2007, 2012; Tunstall 1977; Winseck and Pike 2007). There is no space in this entry to address all of the perspectives on and debates within political economy of communications research on Empire and cultural-media imperialism; so instead, this entry synthesizes some of the field’s most salient insights and themes. The US Empire and Cultural Imperialism: The US State and the Cultural Industries For hundreds of years, the global system has been structured to serve the geopolitical, economic, and cultural interests of powerful imperial countries at the expense of less powerful ones. The history of capitalism and the Westphalian interstate system is part and product of the rise and fall of different types of Empires, some colonial, others postcolonial, but all of which have expanded in pursuit of their interests over land and sea, recently, into air and “outer space,” and now, in “cyberspace.” 3 Following World War II, the global system’s center of gravity shifted from the colonial Empires of old Europe to the United States, and the United States began to distinguish its style of imperial rule from antiquated territorial-colonial forms. While colonialism typically involves one State’s direct dispossession of a people’s sovereignty and control of territory, the postcolonial US Empire strove to develop territorial nation-States that were integrated with and supportive of its overarching vision of order. Unlike the British Empire, the US Empire did not pursue the direct colonial domination and administration of territories, but rather, using tools of coercion and persuasion, it sought to build a global system of client or proxy states that shared its core features and reproduced its model: the capitalist mode of production, the (neo)liberal State form, and the consumerist way of life. The motor of the US Empire’s expansion is imperialism, and US imperialism involves a structural alliance between US corporations and the diplomatic and military agencies of the US Security State. While the political and economic spheres are formally distinct in capitalist society, and there may be conflicts and contradictions between the interests of particular blocs of US corporations and the various agencies of the US State, US imperialism – and cultural imperialism – entails a mutually beneficial alliance, as opposed to conflict, between US-based corporations and the US State. In this regard, US imperialism represents the US State’s facilitation and legitimization of the interests of US-based corporations and, sometimes, non-US corporations, legally, diplomatically, and, sometimes, with military force, across the countries they wish to operate in. In the global system, numerous non-integrated and nonaligned corporations and States exist, and they assert national interests and pursue them in ways that may unsettle Washington. For this reason, the US Empire’s economic and geopolitical planners have routinely deployed a combination of coercion and persuasion to achieve their goals in world affairs. Nye’s (2009) concept of “smart power,” for example, advises the US State to balance hard power strategies (making others do what you want by coercing them) with soft power strategies 4 (getting others to want what you want by attracting and co-opting them) in their struggle to “lead” the world. To elaborate, the US State regularly projects its military power beyond its own territorial borders, declaring and waging wars against opponents. And with the help of private media organizations, the US State runs persuasion campaigns to get others to do what it wants and to want what it wants. With tools of force and consent, the US Empire pushes and pulls other States, peoples, and cultures to integrate with the institutions, policies, ideas, values, and practices that uphold its vision of global order. All of history’s Empires have been cultural imperialists, and the US Empire is no exception to this pattern. In general, US cultural imperialism describes the US State and corporate sector’s coercive and persuasive means and practices that aim to impose or elicit consent to a “way of life” (i.e., production modes, institutions, political and legal norms, policies, languages, customs, and ideas) that is represented as “America” in other countries, with the goal of influencing their ways and without reciprocation of influence. This conceptualization of “cultural imperialism” emphasizes a nexus of the geopolitical and economic spheres and points to a synergistic intertwining of the US State and US corporate actors that drive, lead, and benefit from US Empire and cultural imperialism. What are the mass media and cultural industries, and why are they significant to the US Empire and the State-corporate project of US cultural imperialism? The US mass media or the cultural industries are the privately owned US-based corporations that aim to turn a profit by financing, producing, distributing, promoting, and exhibiting new technologies, media services, and cultural goods that convey meanings about the social world. In general, the cultural industries refer to a wide range of sectors and firms that crisscross the publishing industries; the advertising, marketing, and public relations industries; the TV film, music, and video game or “entertainment” industries; the radio and TV broadcasting industries; the news media industries; the telecommunications and related services industries; and the Internet, Big Data, and social media platform industries. Distinct Mass Media and Imperialism from the cultural industries, the US Security State refers to the federal governmental departments and agencies – the White House, the Department of State, the Department of Defense (including the National Security Agency), the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency – involved in making and pursuing foreign policy decisions. The cultural industries pursue profit for financiers, CEOs, and shareholders. The State advances national security interests and goals, as authorized by the President (and sometimes US Congress), in the name of the “people” it is supposedly beholden to (but most often, for capital). The cultural industries and the US Security State are different types of institutions, and the business goals of the cultural industries and the geopolitical interests of the US State do not always align. There may be tensions between sectors and firms of the cultural industries, as well as competitions between the lobbies of these sectors to influence or win favor among the political class of the US State’s various departments and agencies. Yet, when the US cultural industries and US State agencies come together in collaborations that aim to influence the internal political and cultural affairs of other countries, the thoughts and behaviors of other citizens, and the “ways of life” associated with other national identities, the US-based globalizing cultural industries and the US State are advancing the “media” front of a cultural imperialist project. As a significant component of cultural imperialism, this “media” dimension of US Empire supports the capitalist dominance of the US cultural industries in other markets and buttresses the US State’s geopolitical goal of promoting “America” and winning consent to US foreign policy in other countries. In sum, US cultural imperialism is a Statecorporate project that is frequently supported by the cultural industries, and furthermore, this project is represented through the products of these industries. How, specifically, are the US cultural industries integral to the US Empire’s economic and geopolitical expansion? Mass Media and Imperialism The Economics of the US Cultural Industries: Supported by the US State in World Markets The US Empire’s cultural industries are significant to the overall growth of the US capitalist economy. According to the 2018 Fortune 500 list, five of the top ten most profitable companies in the United States today are “in” the cultural industries: Apple ($48,351 million), Verizon ($30,101 million), AT&T ($29,450 million) Comcast ($22,714 million), and Microsoft ($21,204 million). In 2017, Apple’s profits alone exceeded the combined profits of the “Big Three” automakers – Ford Motor, General Motors, and Fiat Chrysler. Five of the six most valuable companies in the United States (by market capitalization) are digital media companies including Apple, Alphabet (Google’s parent), Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook. Walt Disney, Time Warner, Twenty-First Century Fox, CBC, and Viacom are the biggest five media conglomerates in the United States by revenue; Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, IBM, and Dell Technologies are the biggest technology companies; and AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Charter Communications, and CenturyLink are the biggest telecommunication companies. In 2017, Wall Street rallied around Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet, which accounted for almost half of the gains on the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index. Clearly, the US cultural industries are part of and significant to US capitalism. The US cultural industries are internationally expansive, and their cross-border reach is unrivalled. In 2018, the United States was the global system’s headquarters for most of the largest corporations in the cultural industries. The 2018 Forbes Global 2000 ranks the world’s 2000 largest corporations in four metrics (sales, profits, assets, and market value). In 2018, the United States was headquarters to 76 of the 172 world’s largest corporations in the cultural industries (44% of the world total). By comparison, China, which is often framed as a rival to the United States, is home to a mere 16 of the world’s largest corporations in the cultural industries (9.3% of the world total) (Touryalai et al. 2018). The United 5 States is home to major global TV broadcasting corporations (Comcast, Walt Disney, Charter Communications, Time Warner, Dish Network, CBS, Viacom, Discovery Communications, and News Corp), advertising firms (Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group), computer hardware firms (Apple, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and Dell Technologies), computer service firms (Alphabet-Google, IBM, and Facebook), Internet and catalogue retail firms (Amazon.com, Netflix, and eBay), computer software and programming firms (Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe Systems), and telecommunication firms (AT&T, Verizon Communications). The global capitalist power of the US cultural industries is further cemented by Hollywood’s preeminence in the global entertainment market. Between 2000 and 2017, more than 90% of the top ten highest worldwide grossing films released each year were owned by one of the six major Hollywood studios: Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, and Walt Disney Studios (Box Office Mojo 2018). Furthermore, 11 of the global system’s top 20 most visited websites were in 2018 owned by US corporations: Google.com, YouTube.com, Facebook.com, Wikipedia.org, Amazon.com, Yahoo.com, Twitter.com, Live. com. Google.co.in, Reddit.com, and Instagram. com (Alexa 2018). The United States is the globe’s leading “platform imperialist” because US corporations own the lion’s share of the Internet economy’s hardware and software, intellectual property rights, and user data (Jin 2015). Moreover, in 2017, the United States was home to 8 of the world’s biggest 15 video game publishers (Sony Interactive Entertainment, Apple, Microsoft Studios, Activision Blizzard, Google, EA, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and Take-Two Interactive) (Geoshen 2018). Strong capitalist and expansionist cultural industries exist in other countries (Nordenstreng and Thussu 2015), but most of the largest global corporations in the cultural industries are based in the United States and owned by a US-based transnational capitalist class (Birkinbine et al. 2016). The many corporations that constitute the US cultural industries use a variety of savvy strategies 6 to enter non-US countries to conduct their business and integrate nationally situated cultural industries into their networks and commodity chains. But apropos cultural imperialism as a State-corporate project, these US-based globalizing media and cultural corporations are often supported by the US State, which facilitates and legitimizes their worldwide position of economic primacy, privilege, and power. The international expansion of the US-based cultural industries is buttressed by US State agencies such as the US Treasury, the US Congress, the Department of Commerce’s US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and International Trade Administration (ITA), the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the White House Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), and the US Department of State. These State agencies formulate policies that claim to serve a general “national interest,” but they often support the particular capitalist interests of the cultural industries. Concretely, the US State supports the cultural industries by protecting and promoting the property rights of its owners. Intellectual property rights (IPR) – copyright specifically – is the legal basis for the cultural industries’ mode of capitalist accumulation, its existence and growth, and markets for the exchange of its commodified goods and services. The many media owners of the cultural industries depend on the US State to recognize and legally enforce their copyright, which gives them an exclusive right to enable or prohibit others from using or copying their cultural goods and gives them the right to sell, license, or trade these rights to others in worldwide markets. The US State aggressively protects and promotes the IPR of the US cultural industries with the force of law, at home and abroad. The White House’s USTR, for example, monitors copyright infringing activities all over the world and pressures violating States to enforce within their own territories US-derived copyright legislation. Indeed, the USTR secures the copyright of US corporations “domestically and abroad, bilaterally, and in regional groupings” by “building stronger, more streamlined, and more effective Mass Media and Imperialism systems for the protection and enforcement of IPR” (USTR 2015, 80). To protect the copyright of its core media and digital technology corporations, the US State leads the world in anti-piracy initiatives. In October 2011, for example, the Office of the USTR established the AntiCounterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) “to strengthen the international legal framework for effectively combating global proliferation of commercial-scale counterfeiting and copyright piracy” (Office of the United States Trade Representative 2011). The US State also supports the economic power of the cultural industries by allocating public wealth to them in the form of subsidies. From the earliest days of the US Republic, postal subsidies helped underwrite the commercial newspaper and magazine industry; State and party printing contracts subsidized a partisan press; public libraries and schools bought commoditized books and established a national readership for them; federal grants supported the nation’s private telecommunications system; State-allocated research and development funds helped build the radio and TV broadcasting industries; and the FCC’s allocation of monopoly rights to bits of the electromagnetic spectrum to private broadcasters and cable TV networks helped them grow and prosper (McChesney 1999, 2006, 2008, 2014). In the early twenty-first century, the US State continues to subsidize the various sectors of the cultural industries with income tax credits, property tax abatements, tax exemptions, and more. The US Federal Government and Statelevel governments, for example, use tax credits to keep TV and film production in the US territory and deter Hollywood studios from “running away” to countries like Canada or New Zealand, where labor costs are lower, subsidies more plentiful, and currency exchange rates a boon to business (Miller et al. 2005). Furthermore, some of the wealthiest Silicon Valley companies have raked in massive State subsidies: since 2000, Google has enjoyed State handouts of $766 million; from 2011 onward, Apple has banked $693 million; Facebook pocketed a total of $549 million; and Amazon built its commodity distribution and Mass Media and Imperialism customer data centers with help from $613 million in State grants and tax benefits (Baron 2018). Furthermore, the US State supports the expansion of the US cultural industries around the world and into other countries by promoting a neoliberal foreign policy framework that extols the liberalization, privatization, and deregulation of non-US communication and mass media systems. In 1946, US Assistant Secretary of State William Benton declared: “The State Department plans to do everything within its power along political or diplomatic lines to help break down the artificial barriers to the expansion of private American news agencies, magazines, motion pictures, and other media of communications throughout the world. Freedom of the press—and freedom of exchange of information generally – is an integral part of our foreign policy” (cited in Schiller 1984, 6). During the Cold War, the US State used the free flow of information doctrine to try to break down national protectionist barriers to the cultural industries’ expansion and open borders (and markets) to its influence. This doctrine was “an aggressive [free] trade position on behalf of US media interests” that implied US-based and “trans-national media firms and advertisers should be permitted to operate globally, with minimal government intervention” (Herman and McChesney 1997, 17). Throughout the 1990s, the US State tried to universalize the free flow for media free-trade doctrine at the World Trade Organization (WTO) with multilateral agreements such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and the Agreement on TradeRelated Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) (Herman and McChesney 1997; Schiller 2000). In the early 2000s, the US cultural industries faced an impediment to its maximal expansion in UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Diversity of the Cultural Expressions (CPPDCE), which empowered States to exempt “culture” from multilateral free-trade deals and develop strategies for protecting and promoting national cultural industries and cultures. The US State rejected and condemned the CPPDCE and then negotiated bilateral free-trade 7 deals with Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Singapore, the Dominican Republic, Australia, Morocco, and South Korea (Jin 2011). Currently, the US State “seeks to ensure the continued expansion of U.S. services trade through rules-based liberalization in the WTO, bilateral free trade agreements, and other regional venues” (USTR 2015). In 2011, the Department of State launched the International Strategy for Cyberspace: Prosperity, Security and Openness in a Networked World (ISCPSONW) – developed in consultation with Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo – to reconfigure the Internet as a means of “opening markets to U.S. capital” (McCarthy 2011, 89). Since 2013, the US State has spearheaded new media services free-trade deals such as the TransPacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). In sum, from World War II to the present day, the US State has sought to open all countries up to the freedom of the US cultural industries to conduct their business wherever they like, whenever they want to. In addition to promoting free trade in media and culture, the US State promotes deregulation (or the elimination of political constraints on the power of US and non-US media corporations to maximize profits) and privatization (or the transfer of State ownership over public telecommunication and broadcasting entities to privately owned and profit-seeking media corporations). From the 1980s, the US State has pushed telecommunication deregulation and privatization and played a role in making capitalist telecommunications systems the global norm (Comor 1994, 1997; Jin 2005). The US State’s support for deregulation and privatization enabled US telecommunication firms to globally expand, and between 1983 and 2005, they acquired 1502 foreign telecom companies (Jin 2008). Currently, the United States headquarters some of the world’s largest global telecommunications firms (AT&T and Verizon Communications). The US State has also promoted the deregulation and privatization of national public broadcasters. Over the past four decades, public broadcasters have declined and private media companies have grown, and these 8 private media corporations frequently reproduce the capitalist logics of US-based media conglomerates by pursuing profit maximization, exploiting waged cultural workers, buying and exhibiting copyrighted entertainment (often from the US cultural industries), selling audience attention to advertisers, and modeling their own cultural forms and products on those made popular by US-based firms. The US State’s unwavering support for the cultural industries may be explained with regard to an accommodative relationship between the US State’s policy-makers and lobbies for the US cultural industries. Each day, the interests of the cultural industries are represented to and advanced within the US State by a network of lobbies such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the American Association of Publishers (APP), the Recording Association of America (RIAA), the Software Alliance (BSA), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the Internet Association (IIA), and the International Intellectual Property Association (IIPA). These lobby groups struggle to influence the US State’s communication and media policy and regulatory framework and often succeed in getting their way with political actors and policy-makers which recognize the importance of the cultural industries to the US’s overall economic growth and perhaps also reap personal rewards for compliance. There is also a “revolving door” between the cultural industries and the US State; many lobbyists for the cultural industries have worked for the US State, and many policy-makers for the US State have worked for the cultural industries. For example, in 2014, Stan McCoy moved from his State job with the US Trade Representative to the MPAA, and he is now the MPAA’s President and Managing Director of the region encompassing Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), responsible for policy, operations, advocacy, and personnel across the territory. Moreover, in 2013–2014, 118 out of 142 Comcast lobbyists were formally employed by the US State, 31 of 34 Time Warner lobbyists that period had previously worked for the US State too, and so did 23 of 28 Mass Media and Imperialism News Corporation lobbyists and 15 out of 19 Walt Disney lobbyists (Open Secrets 2014). In sum, the capitalist power and global growth of the US cultural industries have been facilitated and legitimized by the US State, which has protected and promoted US media and communications firms with IP security, subsidies, and a neoliberal policy framework that extols free media-cultural trade and the deregulation and privatization of public telecommunication and broadcasting entities. A convergence of interests – economic and geopolitical – plus a rapidly revolving door between public and private sector personnel primes the US State to support the US cultural industries. Though the owners of some non-US cultural industries push for and prosper as a result of US-derived and enforced neoliberal policy, the biggest beneficiary of this policy framework is the United States, which continues to be home base for the world’s most powerful cultural industries. The Geopolitics of the US Cultural Industries: Supporting the US State in World Affairs The cultural industries are geopolitically significant to the US Empire’s global “soft power” and public diplomacy. In the post-9/11 era, neoliberal “soft power” theorists exalted the global dominance of the US cultural industries and conceptualized US media products as instrumental to US world power. Nye (2004) defined soft power as “the ability [of the US State] to get what it want[s] through attraction rather than coercion or payments” (x) and called upon the US State to join forces with Hollywood, news media corporations, and PR firms to make media products that attract people to American values, identity, and foreign policy. Like Nye, Fraser (2004) asserted that US global leadership depends upon “soft power.” “Make no mistake,” said Fraser, “America’s global domination is based mainly on the superiority of US hard power. But the influence, prestige, and legitimacy of the emerging American Empire will depend on the effectiveness of its soft power” (13). For Fraser (2004, 266), Mass Media and Imperialism “American soft power (movies, television, pop music, fast food) promotes values and beliefs that, while contentious, are ultimately good for the world.” As such, “America’s weapons of mass distraction are not only necessary for global stability, but also should be built up and deployed more assertively throughout the world.” Throughout the twentieth century, the US State built “information” and “media” agencies that partnered with the cultural industries to launch these “weapons of mass distraction” in support of the US Empire’s expansion. The US State and private media corporations have routinely collaborated to inform, influence, and change the attitudes and behaviors of foreign publics in support of US strategic interests around the world (Cull 2008; Mirrlees 2016a; Snow 2003; Wagenleitner 1994). The Committee on Public Information (CPI) (World War I), the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (the inter-war period), the Office of War Information (OWI) (World War I), the United States Information Agency (USIA) (Cold War, 1945–1991) and the Department of State’s Office of Public Diplomacy (post-9/11 Global War on Terror) devised and administered the US Empire’s public diplomacy campaigns, forming alliances with the cultural industries to produce and distribute media and informational products that aimed to organize transnational consent to the American Way and to win support for contentious US foreign policy decisions. The US State’s public diplomacy agencies have conducted global polls to gauge and manage public impressions of US foreign policy; hired PR companies to conduct locally customized influence campaigns; dispatched academics and speakers to foreign countries to talk up US cultural mores; operated international news services and sourced private news companies with prepackaged content; helped globalize the US book and magazine publishing industry and set up citybased reading rooms full of American content; administered international radio broadcasters like the Voice of America and Radio y TV Martí; worked with Hollywood studios to make documentary and war-time propaganda films; operated WORLDNET, a satellite TV agency; and engaged publics via social media platforms to influence 9 them. The US State’s public diplomacy agencies mobilize the total means of communications media to win transnational consent to US Empire, and the US cultural industries have frequently rallied in support of the State’s global persuasion campaigns. For example, following the Bush Administration’s post-9/11 launch of the Global War on Terrorism, a 2002 Independent Task Force on Public Diplomacy sponsored by the Council of Foreign Relations released a report entitled “Public Diplomacy and the War on Terrorism” that called for “the establishment of coordinating structure, chaired by a principal adviser to the president, to harmonize the public diplomacy efforts of government agencies, allies and private-sector partners” (Peterson 2002, 74). Described by BusinessWeek as the “Queen of Madison Avenue,” Charlotte Beers was hired as the State Department’s Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy (OPD). She pledged to rebrand America and recruited the US Advertising Council to help her do so. In 2002, Beers’ launched a public diplomacy campaign across the so-called Muslim World called “Shared Values” comprised of five TV commercials, a Muslim version of Sesame Street, a magazine called Hi, ads in Pan-Arab newspapers, a website called “Open Dialogue,” and virtual “American Rooms.” The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) supported Shared Values with Radio Sawa and soon after Radio Farda. While the OPD’s Bureau of International Information Programs (BIIP) and Bureau of Public Affairs (BPA) handled Shared Values’ media front, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchange (BECA) coordinated cultural exchanges. In 2018, the US Department of State coordinated its own $1.8 billion a year public diplomacy agency that created and circulated positive images of and messages about “America” around the world. The “mission” of the Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD) was “to support the achievement of U.S. foreign policy goals and objectives, advance national interests, and enhance national security by informing and influencing foreign publics and by expanding and strengthening the relationship between the people and Government 10 of the United States and citizens of the rest of the world.” In 2018, the OPD oversaw the bureau of Public Affairs (PA), which “engaged domestic and international media” to further US foreign policy and national security interests as well as broadening understanding of American values.” To that end, the PA deployed “Strategic and tactical communications planning”; conducted “press briefings for domestic and foreign press corps”; pursued “media outreach” to enable people “everywhere to hear directly from key Department officials”; mobilized “social media and other modern technologies to engage the public”; ran “six international Regional Media Hubs”; answered questions about US “foreign policy issues by phone, email, letter, or through social media”; arranged foreign policy town halls and “speakers to visit universities, chambers of commerce, and communities”; coordinated “audio-visual products and services in the U.S. and abroad for the public, the press, the Secretary of State, and Department bureaus and offices”; and prepared historical studies on “U.S. diplomacy and foreign affairs” (US Department of State 2018). Also, the OPD’s US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) launched a Russian-language TV and digital network called Current Time, and its Voice of America and Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty launched Polygraph and Factograph, English and Russian-language factchecking websites to counter “disinformation.” The OPD also ran the Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP), which leveraged “digital communications technology to reach across platforms” and took a “strategic, datadriven approach to develop multimedia, digital communications products” with 700 American Spaces in more than 150 countries. A crucial tool of the US State’s “soft power” arsenal, public diplomacy is a process of influence by which the US State and its private partners in the cultural industries impose upon publics in other countries dominant images of and stories about America and US foreign policy with the goal of winning them to or perpetuating their compliance with their integration with the US Empire. In the process, the US State and private sector public diplomacy campaigns sometimes Mass Media and Imperialism subvert the media and cultural sovereignty of non-US States to protect the societies they govern from unwanted foreign “meddling” in their internal affairs and foreign influence within their cultures. Public diplomacy uses magazines, newspapers, books, radio programs, TV shows, films, and websites to communicate the virtues of the US societal model to citizens in other countries with the goal of getting them to pressure their respective parties and State elites to adopt policies that the US Empire’s planners are comfortable with. And when publics disagree with US public diplomacy, they tend to be constructed as having a flawed or false perception of America that needs to be changed. Yet, public diplomacy aims to change public perceptions of the US Empire without changing the often calamitous foreign policy decisions (including war) that may cause antiAmerican feelings in the first place. When public diplomacy’s words do not reflect the concrete deeds of the US State in world affairs and when image triumphs over substance, its officials will face mass resentment. Though public diplomacy is sometimes framed as fostering dialogue, building mutually beneficial relationships and greater cross-cultural understanding, many US public diplomacy campaigns aim to persuade publics to support the US Empire. For the most part, public diplomacy does not listen to global public opinion so as to responsively change US foreign policy, but aims to know public opinion so as to better manage or control it. The US Empire’s Media Products The previous two sections highlighted a nexus of the economics of the US cultural industries and the geopolitics of the US Security State and identified the major US corporate and State institutions responsible for producing and coordinating the mass-mediated front of US cultural imperialism. This section looks a little more closely at the media products of US Empire and imperialism. The US cultural industries’ products address millions of different people living the US as members of one nationalist “imagined community” and divide this national community into Mass Media and Imperialism multicultural lifestyle identity niches. In any case, these media products do not stay put in the United States. At present, news stories, TV shows and films, interactive games, music videos, sports entertainment, advertisements, and digital media are carried by the US cultural industries, and sometimes the State’s public diplomacy agencies, to the world. As these media products travel across the countries, continents, and entire hemispheres, they expose billions of people divided by geographies, classes, ethnicities, and languages to a wide range of scripts about and images of the American Way of Life and Way of War. The US Empire’s media products turn the world into an audience of America. As mediated stories about and symbols of America and US foreign policy blanket the world, they make the United States akin to a second culture that mashes and mixes with other cultures elsewhere. Many of the US media products traveling the globe carry nationalist consumer-capitalist and militaristic ideologies, but many also carry a plurality of stories about the social complexities and problems of the United States. At the same time, the US cultural industries are de-Americanizing media products to overcome the “cultural discount” associated with the specifics of national place, people, and culture. For example, Hollywood depends upon the worldwide box office for over half of its annual revenue, and so it designs blockbuster films that address a global as opposed to distinctly American audience. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, many of Hollywood’s highest-grossing worldwide films were not explicitly about America: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Avatar (2009), Jurassic World (2015), The Avengers (2012), The Dark Knight (2008), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Finding Dory (2016), and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Moreover, globalizing US TV corporations are sometimes integrating the business strategy of glocalization – or “think globally, act locally” – when designing global reality TV formats such as Top Model and youth music video brands such as MTV International. Though many of the cultural industries’ media products do not carry explicit representations of 11 America to the world, they do support an ideological environment in which capitalism and consumerism must be represented as the ideal, though no longer the exclusively American, way of life. The US cultural industries are in the business of selling media products and selling audience attention to advertisers. But they also play an important role in promoting the ethos of buying on behalf of US and transnational corporate clients such as Apple, McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola. In support of the ongoing engineering worldwide consumer demand for US commodities, and on behalf of a global capitalist system that depends for its survival on the expansion of consumerism as a way of life, the US cultural industries support the national and transnational advertising needs of larger corporations by representing shopping as the meaning of life and promoting branded goods as a significant source of identity, community, and happiness. Though the US cultural industries are globally dominant, the consumer-oriented media products it sells to the world don’t always carry imagery of and messages about America that align with the State’s public diplomacy campaigns. The autonomy of US media corporations from the US State means that there is no guarantee the cultural industries’ media products will textually glorify America and US foreign policy. Interestingly, while neoliberals say the cultural industries are integral to US “soft power” (Fraser 2004), conservatives contend that globalizing media products cause anti-Americanism because they foster a global “false consciousness” about America by representing it as a land of sex, smut and violence, stupid teenagers, vapid consumerism, and political corruption (Defleur and Defleur 2003). Furthermore, Richard Kimball and Joshua Muravchick, of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, say that Hollywood vilifies the United States by pumping out films that convey conspiracy theories of State power (Wellemeyer 2006). For conservatives, it would seem that American media products that do not represent Christian values, happy nuclear-patriarchal families, military veneration, hyper-nationalism, and the sexual chastity of youth are “un- 12 American” and thus responsible for global antiAmericanism. Yet, this is a simplistic explanation. Worldwide, people may enjoy the US cultural industries’ popular TV shows, films, and video games but loathe the US imperial presidency and foreign policy. For example, in 2017, Hollywood made record profits, accumulating $43.4 billion in worldwide revenue (Robb 2018), but in the same year, support for US global leadership fell to an all-time low in almost every part of the world. The cause of waning transnational adoration of the US Empire was not the content of globalizing media products but the Trump presidency. The Pew Research Center’s study of global attitudes found that “Donald Trump’s presidency has had a major impact on how the world sees the US as it is “broadly unpopular around the globe, and ratings for the U.S. have declined steeply in many nations” (Wike et al. 2017). That said, when US media products glorify the US Empire’s wars or attempt to build consent to contentious US foreign policy decisions, anti-Americanism may be exacerbated. As Miller (2005) says, “In the final instance, the links between popular culture and US government aims and policies are key to anti-Americanism, not the content of popular culture” itself (27). In any case, the US cultural industries media products do not reflect “America” or the US State but represent many partial and selective stories about and images of America and the US State. Too often, the “media” of cultural imperialism is a blanket term for each and every media product exported by the US cultural industries to the world. This broad definition unhelpfully bundles together a wide variety of corporate and governmental media sources, different types and genres of media products, and diverse stories and images. This bundling is not unreasonable. At a macrolevel of analysis, it makes sense to classify any media product that is produced and circulated by an Empire’s cultural industries, as the media of cultural imperialism. But this position is too general and conflates too much. There is a difference between a Hollywood film such as Zero Dark Thirty (2012) that affirms preemptive drone strikes and Robert Greenwald’s Unmanned: Mass Media and Imperialism America’s Drone Wars (2013), which contemplates the moral dilemmas and human consequences of drone warfare. Both of these films were directed by US directors and produced and distributed internationally by US film companies, but the former film supports the US Empire’s new way of war, while the latter film scrutinizes it. How best to conceptualize the “media” of cultural imperialism? As discussed previously, US cultural imperialism entails a close alliance between the US State and the cultural industries in competition and conflict with other States and capitals in a global system. The media products of US Empire are those shaped by a nexus of the US State and US cultural industries. To elaborate, the media products of cultural imperialism can be conceptualized in one or all of the four following ways, each which highlights a synergy of the US State and the cultural industries. The media products of Empire can be conceptualized with regard to the geopolitics of ownership. These products are the intellectual property of a US-based and owned media company whose business operations are supported politically against rivals by the foreign policy policies of the US State. This support might take the form of the US State subsidizing IP owner’s operations or protecting them from foreign competition, promoting and protecting the IP rights of the owning company against copyright violators in other countries, or trying to open up other country-specific markets to the free flow of the media product by pushing audiovisual free-trade agreements. Take, for example, the US Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force’s attempt to protect and promote Hollywood-enforcing copyright legislation in China or the State Department’s brokering of audiovisual free-trade agreements with States around the world on behalf of Hollywood. The media products of Empire can also be conceptualized with regard to State-corporate coproduction dynamics. These products result from a collaborative production relationship between the cultural industries and the Security State, the combined labors of the cultural workers and State public affairs personnel. These media products are Mass Media and Imperialism not politically innocent. They’ve been deliberately designed to exert some kind of ideological influence on the way people think about or perceive America and US foreign policy. They intend to have effects, those being, to get people to change the way people perceive the US Empire and potentially think about and behave toward it. Take, for example, the US Department of State’s Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs’ post-9/11 recruitment of Madison Avenue to rebrand America and sell it to the “Muslim World”; the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs’ collaboration with Warner Bros. on Argo (2012); the Department of Defense’s Entertainment liaison office’s work with Paramount Pictures’ global blockbuster film, Transformers (2007); the Navy Seals and Relativity Media’s making of Act of Valor (2012); or the US Army’s recruitment of the video game industry to make America’s Army. All of these media products result from a collaborative relationship between the publicity agencies of the US Security State and privately owned media corporations. Additionally, the media products of Empire can be conceptualized with regard to the content these products carry or express (i.e., the stories, images, messages, and themes). These products are not about any part of American culture, but rather, they show and tell stories about the past, present, or future of the US Empire. These products depict the diplomatic, security, and military agencies of the US State pursuing strategic interests, power, and influence in a world of threats and in a world that wants or is compelled to accept US-imposed order. The media products of Empire represent the US Empire in action, its hopes and fears, its victories and defeats, and its aspirations and sorrows. They may affirm, express ambivalence about, or directly oppose Empire, but all say something about the US State and US transnational corporations in conflict with other States, peoples, places, and cultures. In the video game Battlefield 4 (2013), for example, the US State goes to war against China; Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) is a virtual Third World War between the United States and Russia. Significantly, the media products of the US Empire tend to play a significant role in shaping 13 American and transnational public opinions about what geopolitical topics and issues are important to think about and how to think about them. They may play an “agenda setting” role and tell US and transnational publics what world issues are significant to think about by constructing certain nonUS people, places, and countries as objects worthy of public attention (and often, US military intervention). Additionally, these imperial media products tell people how they should think about the US role in world affairs. Media products about war, diplomacy, and national security are neither mirrors that reflect reality nor nonpartisan mediators of the power relations between the US Empire and other countries, peoples, and cultures. Far from acting as transparent windows to the world, imperial media products “frame” the world in partial and selective ways, thereby encouraging people to develop certain kinds of understandings of the world and often at the expense of others. In effect, these media products actively intervene in and give meaning to the world by telling people what and how to think about it, privileging certain topics and issues for focus over others. There is a need for more research on and case studies of the media products of the US Empire that attend to the economic and geopolitical conditions of their ownership, their State-corporate production dynamics, the stories and images they convey, and the agendas they attempt to set and the frames of reality they construct and invite identification with. Conclusion: The Consequences of the US Empire’s Cultural Industries This entry has presented a holistic overview of the economic, geopolitical, and cultural-ideological significance of the cultural industries to the US Empire and imperialism. Though the US State and the cultural industries are different types of organizations and driven by different interests, there are symbiotic relations between them that support the US Empire and the media of US cultural imperialism. In the twenty-first century, the US cultural industries are the most powerful in the world, and the worldwide capitalist power of the 14 US cultural industries is facilitated and legitimized by the US State. At the same time, the US State’s public diplomacy agencies often link with and mobilize the private cultural industries to produce media products that promote America and US foreign policy to the world. Nonetheless, the cultural industries are privately owned and controlled, and so the media products they produce and sell around the world do not always already align with the US State’s public diplomacy goals. They may carry a wide range of stories and images: some may glorify the US Empire, some may scrutinize it, and others may say nothing at all. One consequence of the extraordinary power of the US cultural industries is an asymmetrical cultural trade relationship between the US and other countries. The US-Canada cultural trade relationship is exemplary of this asymmetry. In 2016, the top ten TV shows watched in English Canada were American hits like The Big Bang Theory, NCIS, and Grey’s Anatomy. Hollywood films usually take 94–99% of the Canadian box office each year, and in 2015, Canadian films accounted for a little over 1% of the total box office. The top 15 most visited websites in Canada are American (Alexa 2018). Netflix and Amazon Prime Video rule the video streaming service sector in Canada, and national upstarts like Bell’s CraveTV never came close to rivalling the size of their subscriber base or revenues. Canada is probably the only country in the world where most people consume more foreign – American – TV than they do national TV shows. Lots of Canadians watch America on their screens; few Americans watch Canada on theirs. The US Empire leaves a big media footprint in Canada and elsewhere too. The US boasts an audiovisual trade surplus with nearly every country. In 2008, Hollywood films took in 16.4 billion rubles at the Russian box office, five times more than Russianmade films. The People’s Republic of China blocks a lot of American entertainment, yet nine out of the top ten 2012 box office hits in China were Hollywood films. Over the past decade, China has tried to create blockbuster global entertainment, but it has not had any success in making entertainment hits in the US market. Mass Media and Imperialism Another consequence of the unmatched power of the US cultural industries is a largely asymmetrical economic power relationship between US cultural industries and those based in other countries. In the early twenty-first century, the US Empire’s cultural industries exist in a global system of sovereign nation-States where “national cultures” are frequently constructed by elites through nationally based cultural industries to fulfill strategic economic and political objectives. The State and business elites of many nationStates regularly use media and cultural policy tools to protect national cultural industries (and sometimes, “cultures”) from the US cultural industries. At the same, time, they promote the internationalization of these industries and their media products to other countries and markets. While States in countries around the world protect and promote the interests of national cultural industries and media products, not all countries have the same (i.e., equal) ability to finance, produce, distribute, and exhibit media products worldwide. So while non-US cultural industries exist all over the world, none of them currently rival the United States. The corporations that constitute the backbone of the US cultural industries possess disproportionate power to integrate and influence the world’s many cultural industries to increase their own returns. As such, the US-based globalizing corporations exert asymmetrical influence over the structure, ownership patterns, distribution and exhibition process, and standards of media product quality of other national cultural industries without proportionate reciprocation of influence by them. That said, the US State and corporate cultural imperialists have never been able to totally “Americanize” national cultural industries nor have they ever achieved “cultural domination.” Nonetheless, the US Empire’s cultural industries and their media products often leave a mark within countries and cultures around the world. The outcome of the capitalist cultural relations between the United States and other countries is best conceptualized as “asymmetrical cultural hybridity” or “unequal cultural mixing,” not “cultural domination.” America is not an ethno-monolith reducible to “blood and soil” but rather a site Mass Media and Imperialism of contestation: socialist, liberal, and conservative Americans battle over the meaning of “America” and articulate it to different political projects, left and right. But because the US Empire is home to the most gargantuan cultural industries in the world, it is better able to produce and circulate media messages about and images of the US than non-US peoples are of their own cultures. Some people on the receiving end of the US Empire’s media products may perceive them as threats to their cultures, while others may embrace them as a positive alternative to what their national State and cultural industries give (or take away). The “audience” of the US cultural industries may interpret, select, creatively mix, and redeploy the texts of American media products in a range of ways, yet there may still be effects, some barely noticeable, others more pronounced. All Empires leave a cultural mark. Undoubtedly, the US Empire’s cultural industries and the media products they sell to the world do as well. 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