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Postcolonial Media Policy Under the Long Shadow of Empire
Introduction1
Media and communication policy for nations and societies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is deeply embedded in discourses and practices of development and modernization, which we trace to a longer history of colonial, national and international governance. In the contemporary neoliberal era, the postcolonial state often legitimates its authority in articulating national development as the basis of policy initiatives around expansion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the liberalization of its media and cultural industries. What we find if we unpack the normatively neutral assumptions behind national media and communication policy is not simply the unequal balance of power of transnational corporations and institutions of governance (such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO)) over local actors. Rather, it is within the discourse of modernization and development that the postcolonial state finds the language to connect with various constituents of the nation. The legacy of the colonial encounter, as we argue below, is visible in the ways in which the actual state practices of policy-making often betray what are unresolved fundamental questions of inequality and exclusion, upon which national discourses of development are founded.
The challenge of inequality and resource distribution has become even more daunting in recent times ...
