Electronic colonialism - Definition and Overview

Electronic colonialism theory was first started by Tom McPhail, a Canadian who began his career with Marshall McLuhan. Following a stint with UNESCO in Paris, McPhail wrote a book for SAGE entitiled Electronic Colonialism in the early 1980s. The theory is about the impact on the mind of repeated mass media messages, including commercials,on audiences around the world. Just as earlier colonists, like Great Britian, sought out soil anywhere in the world as colonies, now mutlimedia giants seek to capture the eyeballs, ears and minds of millions of viewers or readers or listeners. Disney, MTV, Blockbuster, Hollywood, CNN, BBC, the Internet, and others--all seek to influence, not by force, but by packaging media to attract large audiences for advertisers around the globe. The mass media over time will impact more and more individuals--in the English language-- to become more similar as indigenous films and artifacts become marginalized in the tsunami created by high quality and mass produced media messages and systems. McPhail now toils at the University of Missouri and is coming out with a second edition of Global Communication (Blackwell Publishers, 2005) which details the current landscape of electronic colonialism theory.