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By the end of the 1980s, "globalization " had become the term for accelerating interdependence.... The primary agent of globalization is the transnational corporation. The primary driving force is the revolution in information and communication technologies.(1)
Contrary to the conventional wisdom that recent advances in communications have led to the emergence of the "global village," I do not believe that globalization of the media industries sector has resulted in the formation of an international civil society as such.(2) Rather, this process has resulted in an international order organized by transnational economic interests that are largely unaccountable to the nation-states in which they operate. This transnational corporate system is the product of a rationalized and commercialized communications infrastructure, which transmits massive flows of information and has extended its marketing reach to every corner of every hemisphere. While the U.S. role in the creation and reproduction of this worldwide consumer society has lessened, the supporting institutions and the content of the information still bear a heavy American imprint.
THE HEGEMONY OF INTERNATIONAL MEDIA INDUSTRIES
The reality of American global information mastery was strikingly on display throughout the war in the Persian Gulf. During the actual hostilities, one account -- that of the transnational U.S.-based Cable News Network (CNN) -- dominated television screens around the world.(3) Though press interpretations of the war may have varied from country to country, the broadcast images of high technology combat were identical worldwide. However remarkable a demonstration of the American information monopoly -- now challenged by an expanded British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service Television and France's newly created Euronews programming -- even this barely suggests the vast capabilities of American broadcasters and U.S.-based cultural industries to define reality.
CNN's broadcasts are but one kind of image, sound and symbol production. Such output also comes to us in the familiar forms of films, television programs, video cassettes, compact discs, books, magazines, on-line data and computer software. The transmission of this production is neatly explained by Walter Wriston, former chief executive officer of Citicorp:
The single most powerful development in global communities has been the satellite, born a mere thirty-one years ago.... Satellites now bind the world for better or worse, in an electronic infrastructure that carries news, money, and data anywhere on...