Flow and Contra-Flow

The concepts of flow and contra-flow have their origins in discourses about the free expression and flow of ideas. These were prevalent in the era after World War II, when U.S. foreign policy goals incorporated the concept of free flow of information. There was growing suspicion in developing world countries from the 1960s and 1970s that the concept so eagerly promoted by the United States, Britain, and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was a form of cultural imperialism supporting the expansion of Western media and benefiting Western advertisers through the export of a Western way of life. Some critics preferred the term free flow doctrine, highlighting the ideological function of free flow discourse. Criticism grew less sharp in the 1990s and 2000s with the end of the Cold War, rapid development of larger developing countries such as China and India, and evidence of media vitality within many developing countries. Media export activity from developing countries to regional and global markets has been an especially noteworthy factor in mitigating criticism; Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Daya Thussu coined the term contra-flow to apply to this phenomenon (specifically, in relation to news agencies that gathered news from, about, or for the developing world). Many scholars continued using the metaphor of flow, while that of network also became popular. Attracting broader attention than flow and contra-flow, by the 1990s, were phenomena of globalization; the relationship of media to global, regional, and local identity formation; and implications for the modes and quality of expression everywhere. The discourse of globalization inspired a variety of terms to capture the complexity of transcultural media influences, such as glocalization and hybridity.

The 1950s through 1970s was a peak period for flow studies, and their predominant message was that of one-way flow from more to less powerful nations. As early as 1953, a study by the International Press Institute (The Flow of News) demonstrated the great influence over global news flow of the major Western countries, including heavy dependence by developed and developing world media on news supplied by Agence France [Page 405]Presse (Paris), Associated Press (New York), Reuters (London), and United Press International (New York). Studies by Oliver Boyd-Barrett from 1980 through to 2008 demonstrate the continuing importance of such sources. In one of the first examples in scholarly literature of glocalization, Boyd-Barrett, in his 1980 book The International News Agencies, chronicled how the major agencies regionalized their news services to make them more relevant to local geopolitical regions and to head off New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) criticism of them as agents of cultural imperialism. Jeremy Tunstall's 1977 book The Media Are American chronicled the global influence of U.S. media. Tunstall's main argument was that the global success of U.S. media industries was related to the size and wealth of the domestic U.S. market. U.S. media entrepreneurs were able to recoup most of their costs on their domestic market, so they enjoyed great flexibility in pricing for international markets. In a study of the flow of international television programming, Tapio Varis demonstrated strong one-way flows of popular television program exports from major Western producers to countries around the world, many of these depending on imports for high percentages of their prime-time entertainment. Many scholars, including Tunstall, examined the history of Hollywood and its unrivalled financial success as an exporter of movies and increasingly, of television series.

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