Comparative media research: The world according to America

Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization

“…However, the critics' preoccupation with empiricalin other words, statistical-validation or invalidation of the tenets of cultural imperialism, while on the surface illustrating methodological differences, exposes deeper epistemological and ontological divergences, which then U.S.-based German scholar Hanno Hardt (1988) fleshes out in his critical review of comparative mainstream mass communication research in the United States: "This tradition fails to consider historical growth as an indissoluble process that cannot be dissected into empirical parts or facts and prefers to treat communication and media studies in terms of a series of specific, isolated social phenomena. In this context, it seems that the field suffers not only from a cultural bias but also from a social scientific bias toward searching for laws governing the relationship of media and society.…”

“…The rejection of the radical agenda of the cultural imperialism thesis was also grounded in the political context of post-World War II social science research in the United States. According to Hardt (1988), U.S. international communication research has developed in response to the needs of the U.S. government and not as an autonomous area of knowledge. It is true that U.S. policy makers viewed the global spread of American television as both a commercial opportunity and a strategic advantage.…”

Glocalisation

“…Development communication was criticised for failing to understand the complexity of communication processes (Hardt 1988), for being ethnocentric (Golding 1974;Hardt 1988), and ahistorical (Golding 1974). Moreover, as it developed institutionally in the United States in the 1950s, development communication was seen as a continuation of wartime propaganda efforts by the United States, locked in the Cold War with the Soviet Union (Halloran 1997;Hardt 1988).…”

“…Development communication was criticised for failing to understand the complexity of communication processes (Hardt 1988), for being ethnocentric (Golding 1974;Hardt 1988), and ahistorical (Golding 1974). Moreover, as it developed institutionally in the United States in the 1950s, development communication was seen as a continuation of wartime propaganda efforts by the United States, locked in the Cold War with the Soviet Union (Halloran 1997;Hardt 1988). While acknowledging the influence of Lerner's The Passing of Traditional Society (1958), Halloran (1997) nevertheless criticises it on the grounds that it had 'more to do with the Cold War politics of the time than with issues at the heart of development communication' (p.33).…”

A Change of Lens: A Call to Compare the Media in China and Russia

“…Comparing Russia & China 3 3 Hardt, 1988;Livingstone, 2003;Nerone, 1995;Oates, 2006;Sparks, 1998;Szpunar, 2012;Yin, 2008), aside from a few exceptions (Curran & Park, 2000;Downing, 1996;Gunaratne 2005;Hallin & Mancini, 2012;Sparks, 1998Sparks, , 2008, insufficient effort has been made to correct this orientation. This bias manifests itself at the empirical level in terms of which cases are selected for comparison, at the methodological level in terms of how comparisons are conducted, and at the theoretical level in terms of what conceptual frameworks are utilized.…”